


A Standing Agreement

by EskelChopChop



Series: Every Place and No Place [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Violence, Everyone has daddy issues, Fantasy Racism, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Homophobia, Hopeful Ending, It all comes full circle, Mob Violence, Mystery, Papa Vesemir, Patriarchy, Plot-Driven, Sickness, The Law of Surprise (The Witcher), Tragic Romance, Witcher Contracts, Xenophobia, another ordinary day in the witcherverse, eventual platonic friendship, fucked up family dynamics, mourning while emotionally constipated, themes for days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25827109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EskelChopChop/pseuds/EskelChopChop
Summary: After the Battle of Kaer Morhen, Eskel returns to the Path and takes a strange contract. Plague has killed half of the inhabitants in a small farming village. This would sound like a job for a healer, not a witcher, except for one unsettling detail: only the men are dying. So much for another day, another drowner.Complete!
Relationships: Eskel & Vesemir (The Witcher)
Series: Every Place and No Place [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909087
Comments: 118
Kudos: 101
Collections: The Witcher - On the Path





	1. After the Storm

I.

Kaer Morhen. Mountains like geriatric dragons’ teeth, winters like an ice giant’s ass, marshes full of foglets, forests full of wolves, and caves full of children’s bones. And yet, Eskel thinks as he leans back against the walls of the old witcher’s keep, Kaer Morhen, why are you so fucking beautiful? 

The valley gleams in the sunlight. It’s too busy shining to answer. 

This place. Cold, hard earth. Peaks that blur in the snow-laden wind. The forest, shaded and still. Matching his heartbeat to the pace of tree and mountain, Eskel finds the right phrase for it: this place quiets him. Not just because it’s home. On days like this, he can feel himself growing quiet, like the valley.

Except for the tiny bothersome thought that---

“Aha! This is your idea of hard work?”

\--Vesemir can track him anywhere.

Eskel grins but his eyes stay fixed on the mountain pass. “Figured you need the exercise more, old timer.”

The familiar voice scoffs. “Call me ‘old timer’ again, and I’ll have you running the Gauntlet ‘til sundown. Carrying an anvil!”

“The Gauntlet. Had to dust off that threat, huh. Gonna send me to bed without supper next?” 

“On Lambert’s night to cook? Did you see what he’s making?” 

“Why d’you think I’m out here?”

Vesemir mutters into his moustache in a signal that he’s done with “young people’s nonsense,” and Eskel laughs. Vesemir settles himself in the grass, grunting as if he’s actually an invalid and not the master witcher who, just last month, split a forktail’s skull in one stroke. Eskel turns to catch the master witcher’s expression. Bunched into the gray moustache, it’s a smile. 

“Some excuse.” Vesemir lifts his arms, the picture of the long-suffering elder. “One of us was just admiring the moleyarrow. Composing sonnets to their beauty, perhaps. Meanwhile, the walls are crumbling all around our…” He waves an arm at the keep behind them. 

Moldy wreck of a fortress? Eskel thinks.

“… historied school,” Vesemir finishes. ““You know the saying. What comes first?”

Eskel sighs. “Steel before meals.”

“Exactly. Defense first, comfort later, and that means repairing the outer wall.”

Eskel raises an arm, takes a breath to speak-- and lets his arm fall back into his lap.

“Yes? You have a comment?”

Eskel takes that breath again. “Just. Wall’s been broken awhile.” Years, but why push the old man.

“Indeed. In a witcher fortress! What an embarrassment. Just yesterday, Lambert spotted a wyvern over the northern guard tower. Supposedly. Now, what would draw a wyvern to this valley, with winter coming... Not the most intelligent specimen, I’d wager.”

“Must’ve smelled Lambert’s cooking. Whole valley stinks like rotted goat.”

Vesemir’s eyebrows knot together. He raises the lecture finger-- and then he breaks into a smile. Eskel grins, and they share a chuckle that’s more like a well-suppressed sob. Lambert’s cooking. Not even witchers can withstand it for long.

The chuckles die off. Eskel can hear the breath entering Vesemir’s lungs, his heart beating. He knows Vesemir can hear the same in him. Sometimes this is all he needs-- someone who can hear what he hears. Vesemir is staring south, where the path to the witcher’s keep drops into a sparkling slip of a river, so Eskel looks, too. Both of their heartbeats grow quieter, and they sit breathing. 

“Not a bad spot,” Vesemir says. “Neglect of duty aside.”

“Better than meditatin’.” 

“It _is_ meditating.”

The quiet deepens, within and without. This place of death, Trials, and quiet. This place. 

“Three hundred years, witchers have held this valley.” Vesemir’s voice is grave. Eskel tilts his head to see Vesemir’s far-off expression, his feline eyes squinted against the sun. “And the valley stays the same.” Vesemir’s lip pulls upward but doesn’t become a smile. “Three hundred years from now…”

“...we’ll be here, admirin’ the view. And still plannin’ to fix that wall.”

Eskel expects a smile, a scoff, or one of Vesemir’s old-man handwaves of contempt. Instead, Vesemir’s expression doesn’t change at all. 

“Somethin’ on your mind, old man?”

That breaks Vesemir’s hypnosis. “It’s that obvious?”

“Like a doppler on fisstech.” 

“Hmph. I won’t ask where you’ve seen that, Mutt.” Eskel grins at the private nickname but Vesemir isn’t looking at him. The old witcher exhales. “It’s Lambert.”

“Ehhh, don’t mind him. That’s been his song for decades— how we oughta move south, let these moldy walls crumble, leave Kaer Morhen for good. La la la, same old. Remember that first time he got drunk and threw all the swords out the window? ‘Pack up, we’re moving out!’ Hasn’t changed since.”

“Damn it all. Lambert may confuse his head with a basilisk’s cloaca, but sometimes he hits the mark.” Vesemir shakes his head. “Ahhh. I’ve been foolish, Eskel.”

Eskel sits up. “Hey, Vesemir--”

Vesemir raises his hand. Instinctively Eskel shuts up. 

“Do you remember how many of us there were, when you were a little boy? When I first brought you here?”

Eskel gives a little boy’s answer: “Lots.”

“Yes.” That makes Vesemir smile, just a little. “And now. How many are we today? Lambert. Me, slowing down by the day. Geralt, when he deigns to appear. And you.”

Eskel hears the old witcher’s heart stutter. Something’s waiting to be said. Eskel can choose to wait for it. Instead, he squints at the gray clouds sweeping overhead. Half of the valley has fallen into shadow. 

“Looks like snow,” Eskel murmurs. 

Vesemir is looking at him. He can feel the attention of those cat eyes on his face, the side with the scar. 

“You’ve always come back, Mutt.” Vesemir’s voice is gentle. “No royal plots, no complaints. You do your work. It’s efficient, focused. Yes. You’re a witcher’s witcher. You do us proud.”

No escape now. Eskel meets the feline eyes of his mentor. “I’d say thanks, but… got a feelin’ you’re goin’ somewhere with this.”

“I am. Long time coming, too. We ought to face the truth,” Vesemir says. “One day, I may not be around to do the damned household chores. Something will do me in… hell, some drowner might do it, if I slow down enough. The thought.”

Eskel doesn’t move or speak. He’s waiting for the rest.

“Eskel, when the time comes—will you stay?” 

“Stay,” Eskel repeats. He wants to pretend that he doesn’t understand, that he can’t imagine Kaer Morhen without Vesemir. That he’ll never have to. 

“In winter, at least-- to take care of the place. Light the torches, for when the others come back.” 

“A mutt runnin’ a school for wolves.” Eskel tries to grin. “We’ll never live it down.”

“Sst. Don’t brush me off like some nattering fool. If you’re all to keep wintering here, someone needs to mind the place. Keep the snow and leaves out. Patch the walls. Keep that damned goat well-stocked with feed. Geralt and that… delightful woman will land in trouble every time they sneeze. Lambert.” Vesemir snorts. “Koenrad hasn’t come north in over a decade. No one’s heard from Andrik since the baron incident in Crinfred.”

“Heard that Andrik went south,” Eskel says. “All the way to Caelf. Got his hands on a bottle of rare Cidarian wine and decided he couldn’t live without it.” 

“Hmph. Good luck to him—drinking wine, watching the mummings, growing fat and slow in a city without witchers’ work.” 

“Want me to tell ‘im he’s fired?”

Silence instead of an answer. 

Eskel feels weight on his shoulder. Vesemir’s hand. He turns from watching the gray clouds cover the valley. The pupils in Vesemir’s eyes are round, almost human. 

“Eskel,” Vesemir says, in a soft voice that he stopped using after they earned their medallions, “be honest with me. Will you lead this place? After.”

Eskel looks into the eyes of the only father he can remember. He opens his mouth to say that he will, of course, because that is what Eskel does and has always done when Vesemir asks him something. Yes, Vesemir, I’ll run the Gauntlet. I’ll clear out that foglet nest. You can’t be gone. But if you are, I’ll be here, of course, I’ll stay. 

A frigid wind blows dark clouds over the sky, and then Eskel remembers.

“Vesemir.” His voice catches. Eskel lays his hand on top of Vesemir’s. The old witcher looks at him-- gray moustache, wrinkled forehead, old armor maintained with a loving hand, everything the way it was. “Old timer. Listen… Kaer Morhen’s done. The Wild Hunt-- we beat ‘em, damn it. Well. Ciri beat ‘em. You woulda been proud. They’re gone, but…”

He lowers his head. There’s already snow on the ground.

But you died. We came here to winter, like fucking fools-- who winters in the mountains, in the north? You held this place together. You were this place. You raised us here, trained us, taught us to kill. Made us witchers. We learned well, we killed the Hunt… and they killed you. What’s this place now? Geralt’s gone with his sorceress, Lambert’s gone with _his_ sorceress, and… me? Ha ha. Come on, old man. You know me. 

“This is a dream,” Eskel says. He lifts his head, but Vesemir is gone.

An emptiness opens inside Eskel. It hollows him, and the cold wind from the peaks makes him want to lie down until his limbs go numb and each witcher sense fades to nothing. 

“Old man!” Eskel stumbles to his feet. “Wait! Don’t…”

Don’t leave, like everyone else. 

“Vesemir!” Eskel finally shouts. It doesn’t even echo. The keep is dark. Winter’s come, and there’s no one to light the torches. 

Snow falls over the last witcher in Kaer Morhen, falling to bury them both.

Until the silence breaks.

\---

“Hyaaa!”

“Ungh!” 

Pain, _fuck_ , deep in his stomach. Eskel’s eyes opened. The dream fell to pieces, leaving darkness. Where--

“Kick him again, kick him again!”

“Hya!”

“Agh!” 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s—gah! Prick! Rurik, get ‘is other arm. Get ‘is—argh, this—"

“What—what are you—I thought we—we’ve got the horse—”

“Shut it. Hya!”

“Annngh… hell…”

Eskel tried to roll aside, get away from the voices. Something held him down. Where was he? Smells of unwashed bodies, tree sap, dirt, horse. Forest. Sounds: men hissing to each other, hearts pounding, deep ragged breaths. No torches. Robbers? From-- Ban Glean. Kaedwen. Right, he rode south from Kaer Morhen, camped, slept. Thought he’d been far enough from the road. How many of them? One pinning his left arm, one pinning his right, one standing several paces off, and one driving his knee into Eskel’s chest. Four of them, and him prone and pinned.

“Good mornin’, buttercup,” said the one on his chest.

Eskel tensed as much as he could, tried to harden the soft vulnerability of his solar plexus as the man leaned his weight into Eskel’s chest. No use. Hard to breathe. All he managed in response was “Nngh.”

“See yer listenin’. Here’re our terms, mate.” Millet on the man’s breath, goat-smell and stale sweat going back for days. “Fine animal ye’ve got there. Understand, we’re not all so lucky as ye’ve been. We’re havin’ hard times, real hard times. Out the pity o’ yer heart, ye’ll make us a gift o’ this lovely beast. And everythin’ else the good gods know we’ll need.” Cold, hard edge against the right side of Eskel’s neck. “If ye’re not a kind, generous friend—then ye get gutted.”

Eskel’s pupils dilated. Shapes emerged in the darkness. Now Eskel could make out the face above him: a beard and a grin. 

“Ognjen,” said the one in the background. A younger voice, shaken. Scorpion stamped a hoof. Someone was trying to wrangle him. “We don’t gotta gut ‘im, do we? Got ‘is horse. And a spiky jacket-like thing, and a saddle, and… ahhhh, there’s somethin’ on it...”

“Ye’re right. We don’t gotta gut ‘im,” Ognjen said, grinding his knee into Eskel’s chest again. “Our comrade’s gonna be very generous to us. Ain’t that right, friend?”

They were holding him down by the shoulders and elbows. None of them noticed when the hand of his outstretched left arm turned, palm upward. “Sure,” Eskel panted. “Friend.”

“Ognjen?” The shaky voice sounded even shakier. Ognjen ignored him, still smirking down at Eskel.

The fingers of Eskel’s left hand curled into the sign of Aard. 

The air exploded. The man pinning his left arm vaulted headfirst into Ognjen’s goat-smelling mass. Both men hurtled into the man holding Eskel’s right shoulder, and the whole writhing pile heaved into the dirt. Eskel leapt to his feet. His body moved for him. The witcher mutagens in his blood howled to do what he’d been created to do— snap necks, split bodies, kill. 

Someone got up. Where were his godsdamned swords? No time. Eskel raised his arm in the sign of Quen. The man rushed him, threw a right cross at Eskel’s unmoving face—and howled as his knuckles cracked against the unseen shield. Eskel kneed him in the stomach, threw him down by the hair, kicked him in the face before he remembered this wasn’t a monster and cheekbones are delicate. Too late.

“Sorc’er! Sorc—” One of them reached for something in his belt. Eskel closed the distance and drove his fist into the man’s chest, felt the whoosh of breath forced from lungs. Uppercut to the jaw? Shatter it? No. Left elbow to the temple. The bone of his forearm arced into the man’s temple. He fell, wheeling his arms weakly. 

The scared one in the back, where was he? Eskel caught his breathing. Hadn’t moved, good. That left Ognjen-smelled-like-goats, upright, panting. The one who’d threatened him. His eyes were squinting—the man couldn’t see well in the dark. Eskel could see better. Ognjen held his dagger awkwardly, out too wide. No leverage there. Unprofessional.

Unaware that he was on the verge of suicidal stupidity, Ognjen charged. Compared to a katakan’s claws, the dagger moved in slow motion. Eskel dodged, saw the opening, Ognjen’s unprotected jaw and all limbs out of place to defend it. Eskel jabbed there, a straight thrust of muscle and bone. His knuckles flattened Ognjen’s cheek. 

Ognjen flailed with the dagger, but he was night-blind and off-balance. Eskel aimed at Ognjen’s face and jabbed, connected, once, twice, ripped the dagger out of Ognjen’s grasp because the man didn’t know what was going on now and couldn’t hold on.

The others were moving. Eskel pushed Ognjen’s face into the dirt with one hand and cast Yrden with the other. The forest sprang to life in a tangle of eldritch light and crazed shadows. Someone shouted. He barely heard it. This goat-smelling man had held a dagger to his throat and there wasn’t anywhere to sleep now without goats, sweat, and daggers in the night, no safe place, no quiet. Right now, Eskel hated this man. He pulled back to land another bone-ringing strike. 

“Master Witcher! Please!”

Somehow, that broke through. Eskel stopped. Ognjen didn’t move. Beyond the runes that flickered in the underbrush, the three other men stood. Two of them were looking at the shaky one, and the shaky one was looking at him, but none of them came closer. Eskel let his arm fall to his side. 

“Witcher?” one of those others said. 

The shaky one swallowed. “Tried to tell you. There’s a- a _head_ on that saddle. Some… awful beast! Hideous, it is!”

There was. Not much to look at-- only a nekker. Eskel hadn’t found anything bigger since the ride south from Kaer Morhen. But it changed the expressions on the men’s faces.

“A witchman.” The man curled his mouth like it was profanity but Eskel could hear his heart beat faster. 

“Yeah.” Eskel found his fingers curling in Ognjen’s hair and lifting the man’s head. “Lookin’ for a new trophy. Tell me why I shouldn’t use his. 

The threat made no sense. Witchers didn’t use human heads as trophies. Eskel couldn’t find his swords, hadn’t slept in his armor-- and now that the blind animal fury receded, he didn’t want to kill this man. Looks like he wouldn’t have to. Between the glowing runes, the nekker head, and the scars that they could now see in the runes’ light, the men had had enough. 

“We know where there’s work for ya. Proper witcher’s work.” This from the one who must have broken something in his hand against the Quen shield. By the slur of his speech, something might have broken in his face, too. “They posted a real notice and everythin’.” 

“How ‘bout that,” Eskel drolled. “A real notice.”

“I… I just mean…”

“Vaclav put it up a while ago.” This from the man whose forehead was already swollen. “That’s the aldorman out in Aelweir. They been lookin’ for a witcher bad. It’s true!”

Ognjen grunted underneath him. Eskel tightened his grip on the man’s hair. “Where’s Aelweir?”

“It’s…” The shaky one tried to point. His arm swept in an arc that included the east to the south.

“Let our boy go,” the man with the swollen temple said. “We’ll tell ya, sure ‘nough. Just let us take ‘is fool ass home. He ain’t no ‘arm to anyone now.” 

Eskel looked down. He might’ve broken Ognjen’s cheekbone. The thought brought back the chill he’d felt in his dream, a feeling like a cold wind between stones. This man was a fool, not a monster. He let go of Ognjen, stood up, backed away with the dagger held up. 

“I’m keepin’ this,” Eskel said. “Souvenir.”

The man with the swollen temple nodded. “‘course, sir, ‘course. It’s yours.”

The shaky one helped Ognjen stand up. He’d be alright, as long as he gave up playing highway robber. The one with the broken hand stepped closer, though still at a respectful distance, regarding him in silence. Yrden’s rune-light faded at their feet. 

“Look at us fools,” the man said at last. “Ha! Went to shake down a man for ‘is horse to find ‘e’s a bleedin’ witcher. Mighta been you’da ridden right by, and Aelweir’d find no help for itself. Us neither. That trouble down in Aelweir, some of our folk’ve worried it’s the kind to spread. And then we’ll all be good and ploughed.” The man huffed something between a chuckle and a scoff. “Maybe was fate brought us to this here road, witcher. Some god guidin’ you to the work that needs doin’.”

Eskel wasn’t in the mood to hear that he was a godsend from a man who’d just tried to rob him in his sleep. “Yeah. Some god. Directions would be even better.”

“Right ye are, Master Witcher. So ye wanna get to Aelweir—head down the road another two miles. Make a left at the old windmill and keep movin’ along ‘til you see the river sylph’s shrine. Not the Bullman’s shrine, mind ya, farther on ‘an that. See the cairn of the catfish, ye’ve gone too far. Turn right and keep movin’ ‘til ye’re past the birches, where the river comes through. It’s along the river, northern shore.”

Eskel nodded. “Windmill, sylph shrine, birches. Appreciated.”

“’course,” the man grunted, not meeting his gaze. “Least we could do. And-- yer pardon again.”

Ognjen looked up from where the other two hunched over him. His misshapen face split into a savage smile. “Plough ‘is pardon. Ye go on to Aelweir, ye walking cockrash. Get to yer devil’s work. And when ye die drownin’ in yer own guts and shit, do us a kindness—spare me a thought.”

“Think you’ll be occupied,” Eskel said. “You fuck all of the goats in your herd, or just your favorite?”

Two of the men pulled Ognjen back as he spat all curses and called down diseases known and unknown upon Eskel’s manhood. He could have broken through their grip-- if he actually wanted to.

Eskel stayed still, listening for all four sets of footsteps to fade. They were going north, the opposite direction of Aelweir… if any of their story was true and Aelweir was a real place. But that was his life, wasn’t it? Chasing occasionally imaginary monsters for imaginary or paltry pay. And the home where he could rest from it all-- now that was imaginary, too.

When he was satisfied that they were gone, Eskel heaved a sigh. Gods, the night was dark. He had to find Scorpion by feel. Not too hard-- once he got close, Scorpion nudged him and snorted into his hair.

“Hi, pretty boy.” Eskel stroked the horse’s neck. “Gettin’ us into trouble again?”

Scorpion flicked a nonplussed ear.

Eskel shook his head as he brushed his hand over Scorpion’s flank, nearly invisible in the darkness. “What I get for ridin’ a knight’s horse. Should’ve asked for a donkey. Nobody steals donkeys. And they make decent griffin bait.” 

Scorpion huffed. 

“Snob.”

He was wide awake. No use trying to sleep here-- better pack up. After hunting in the dark with a few flashes of Igni, Eskel found his swords exactly where he’d left them—conveniently out of reach. Now he remembered. He’d moved his bedroll in the night when the roots had proven uncomfortable, and he’d forgotten to move his swords with him. 

“Tsk tsk.” Eskel wore a wry grin despite himself as he adjusted the saddle straps. “Swords outta reach, taken unawares… Old man wouldn’t stand for that. Can hear the lecture already.” 

The old man. 

The dream came back to him, vivid down to the winter chill that he remembered in his bones. That had looked and felt like Vesemir down to the streaks of varying gray in his moustache. Cruel dream, to bring him back and then take him away before Eskel could finish saying what he needed: you wanted me to stay, old man. But I’m not you. I can’t hold us together the way you did. We’ve scattered. You made us, been telling us what to do since we were kids, so help me out. What am I supposed to do now?

Eskel rested his forehead against Scorpion’s flank. He was tired, was all. Coming down from the adrenaline. 

“Anyway. This contract.” His voice came out hoarse. Eskel cleared his throat. “First work we’ve seen. Worth a look. ‘nother chase, ‘nother runaround… yeah, we know the drill. Don’t we, boy?”

Yes, the contract. That was the next step. Afterward he’d find another contract and another after that. Back on the Path, wandering ever onwards and getting nowhere.

When all was packed and strapped in, Scorpion threw his head. It was dark, not a time for riding. Eskel tsked as he settled himself into the saddle. “Ah, stop whinin’. We’ll stop soon. Put some distance between us and our new friends, then sleep. And hey-- how ‘bout a little warnin’ next time?”

Scorpion flicked his tail as they set off slowly down the road. Eskel patted his withers. “Huh. See if I buy you the good oats.”


	2. The House with White Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eskel and Aelweir's aldorman agree to a contract, more or less.

Directions proved unnecessary. The smell was all Eskel needed.

He first caught it by the abandoned windmill on the side of the road. The breeze lifted for a moment, and instead of the sweetness of hay, up came the stench of rot. Eskel pulled the reins, sniffed, but it had already vanished. 

Scorpion caught it soon after they passed the Bullman’s shrine. The horse had war in his blood, knew the scent of death. Eskel had learned the signs: tension in the lips, strain at the edges of the huge black eyes, muscles tightened. 

“Easy,” Eskel murmured, laying a hand on Scorpion’s withers. 

When they reached the river and saw the first thatched roof through the trees, the stench surrounded them. There were other smells in the air now—kitchen fires, cooking-smells, fresh manure, the scents of village life. Beneath it all, rot and ash. 

Eskel surveyed the land as they clopped onward. This was a farming village, but half of the crops had grown ragged, with the barley fighting for space with weeds. But no wonder-- Eskel couldn’t see or hear a trace of people. No one tending the crops, no one resting in the shade. They’d nearly entered the village proper when Eskel finally caught movement. Catching the sound of approaching hoofsteps, two women rose to stand in one of the better-tended fields. One of them, a young woman in her twenties, lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The other, thoroughly gray, squinted motionless.

They didn’t move as Eskel moved into conversational distance. He nodded in greeting. The younger one dropped her hand with a jerk.

“‘mornin’,” he called out. 

The old woman planted her fists on her hips. “You lost, young man?” 

“Could be.” Eskel turned Scorpion aside and stomped to a halt. “This Aelweir?”

“Aye. ‘Tis.”

“Nope. Right place. Heard your aldorman wants a witcher.”

“Heard that, did you?” The old woman’s mouth widened. Eskel couldn’t tell if she meant to smile or grimace. “Fancy that. I’ve heard different.”

Not the most promising start. “He didn’t post a notice?” 

“Oh, he did. But he weren’t happy ‘bout it. ‘bout everybody else in the village went clamorin’ for a witcher, not him.” She sniffed. “And not me either, tell you the truth. A pellar? Yes. A cunning woman? Even a witch _doctor_ might be useful. But a witcher? What’re you to do here, eh?” The young woman looked quickly at the older, but said nothing.

“No idea, ma’am. Met a couple fellas on the road up north. Said there was work here for me, so...” Eskel chopped a hand downward to indicate his current position. 

“‘Fellas’ said that, eh?” The old woman smirked. “These fellas know what witchers do? Or do you all double as healers on weekends?”

Eskel’s stomach dropped. It would be empty for another week, at least, if this turned out to be a bogus contract. “Always thought we should diversify.”

The old woman lifted one of her fists to swat the air in his direction. “Pah. You’ll not do any good around here, ‘less it’s to fetch us a cunning woman. Would you mind, actually? We’ve no horse in this village since Boglan’s ran off, and you’ve got such a fine beast…”

“Nana,” the young woman muttered, at a volume not meant for him to hear. 

“‘fraid ‘messenger’ ain’t in the job description,” Eskel said. “Well, whether he’s clamorin’ or not, he posted the notice. Vaclav, right? Where do I find him?”

“You could try the sties.” This from the young woman. Her voice surprised him-- she spat the words in a voice edged with contempt. “Maybe he’s wallowing there.”

“Evva!” The old woman whirled on her. “In front of a stranger!”

“What of that?” The young woman, Evva, stood straighter. “It’s true. He’d be more use to us as a pig. At least pigs bring food to the table. Whole village dying around him, and what does our aldorman do? Nothing but ramble on about Federbludd. With near-every father in the village buried!”

The old woman took a breath with what looked like a reprimand on her lips. But her exhale sighed it away and worked her mouth into a wry smile. “He’s done something now-- seems he hired this young man to _stab_ the plague away. Huzzah, we’re saved.” 

“Ah…” Eskel said. “Sooner you point me toward Vaclav, sooner I can... get to stabbin’.” Or confirm this was a steeplechase, with no actual work for twenty miles. 

The old woman laughed. Evva didn’t. 

“The house with the white flowers. Down the path there,” Evva said, pointing toward the central cluster of cottages. “You can’t miss it.”

Eskel nodded. His attention would have moved on, except Evva was staring at him. Not at his scar, which he was used to, but at him. Sizing him up.

“Thanks,” Eskel said, holding her gaze. She didn’t look away. 

“Good luck to you, brave witcher lad!” The old woman waved jauntily. “You slice that plague to bits!”

Scorpion clopped forward dutifully. Eskel waited until the women were out of sight to exhale and stroke the horse’s neck. “You didn’t actually want the good oats, did you?” And did he actually want a full stomach? It was starting to sound as if they’d both go hungry. The would-be bandits had put on a good show. Nice touch bringing up fate. But this was starting to sound like a bum contract. What aldorman posted a notice for a witcher when he didn’t want one? 

Eskel had encountered a case like that once before. He found common folk demanding the death of a rare purple-scaled wyvern while the resident lord insisted it could be made into a tourist attraction. What a pain in the ass, that contract. In the end, Eskel had killed the beast and persuaded the unhappy lord to taxidermy its hide if he wanted to stare at it so much. Bad pay, bad blood, bad business. This situation in Aelweir was starting to sound the same. 

But witchers can’t be choosers, can they? Leastaways, not poor witchers.

Evva had said to look for white flowers. Eskel discovered what she meant: one of the cottages stood draped in ropes of white and green yarn woven into the shape of flowers in bloom. Someone had hung them from the roof. The green yarn had been bleached dull by the sun, but the craftsmanship was still clear. 

Eskel dismounted. He had to part the strings of woven flowers to knock on the door. It rattled in the doorframe, too old to offer the solidity it once had.

The aged door cracked open, and a blue eye and a splash of freckles peered out at him. The eye took him in, moving over the spikes on his jacket to the wolf’s head medallion at his throat, and then to Scorpion.

The door opened fully, revealing a woman in her forties. Now he could see the sunken circles around the blue eyes as they fell to his scars. There was an involuntary sound from her throat-- not of speech, but of a soft fleshy part instinctively closing. 

The woman hugged herself. “Yes?” she murmured.

“‘mornin’, ma’am.” Eskel tried a polite smile. “I’m lookin’ for Vaclav?”

She was looking at his scars again. Her arms tightened around herself. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we know you.”

“No, ma’am. Not from ‘round here.” Eskel tilted his head toward Scorpion, who had begun wandering off with his snout to the ground. “Was ridin’ by, heard you needed a witcher.”

Something clattered from inside the cottage. The woman turned her head a fraction, parted her lips, but didn’t shift her gaze from him. “Then-- you’re here about the notice?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The knowledge moved visibly through her body, changing each limb as it went. Her tired eyes widened and gave him another once-over, from his boots back up to his scars and stopping there, again, always the damned scars. Her expression settled. Now she looked at him like he was a battle-scarred fighting dog she’d bet on, a beast to inspire revulsion, fear, and hope.

“Oh.” The fragile hints of a smile. “It’s been a month since we posted that notice. I thought nobody would come.” The smile wavered. “A real witcher.”

This was more hopeful. She didn’t move from the doorway, though. Eskel tilted his head to see behind her, but his view ended with a blank wall. “That’s me. So… Vaclav the one I talk to?”

“Yes. He’s our aldorman. Ahh…” She turned her head and looked into the cottage, where he couldn’t see. “He hasn’t been feeling well of late…”

A sound like a groan came from inside the cottage, followed by a man’s voice with the edges of the words blurred together: “Oi! I’ve never been better, woman. What stories’re ya makin’ up out there?”

The woman’s lips tightened. “We have a visitor, Vaclav.”

Footsteps shuffled toward the door. The man that staggered into view was approaching middle age, but booze and years of toil in the fields had carved crags into his face. The sourness of cheap vodka clung to his breath.

“Dear.” The woman clasped her hands in front of her. “This man’s a witcher. Says he’s come about the notice.”

“A _witcher_. Caught a live one, eh? Let’s have a look.” The man leaned against the doorway in a loose flop of limbs and blinked at Eskel. “Wellllll now. Some mug ya’ve got. Kitty eyes and everything. Ya like saucers of milk, too?”

The man-- Vaclav-- smirked. The woman’s eyes flicked toward Eskel, then back to the ground. 

“Prefer it by the glass,” Eskel said. To the woman: “This a bad time?”

She looked up. “Well--” 

“Always a bad time in these parts.” Vaclav looked Eskel over with a critical eye. His inspection finished with a curl of his lip. “Gettin’ worse now. Terrible day, when we need a mutant to take care of our own.”

Eskel kept his face still. “Sounds tough.”

The woman looked between them rapidly. “Dear,” she said, her voice sweet and appeasing, “he’s come a long way. Why don’t we have a seat inside and--”

“No.” The single, harsh syllable cut the sweetness of her voice. “We’ll pay ‘im. But we’re not takin’ his kind into our home.”

“Don’t worry,” Eskel said. “I’m housetrained.”

Vaclav squinted at him. 

“It might be better inside,” his wife said, her voice low and unthreatening. “These conversations might-- benefit from privacy?”

Vaclav stared at her, hard. Then he tossed his arms in the air, an almost violent gesture. “If that’s how it is,” he snapped. “If we’ll let any creature waltz on in, forget all about the sacredness of hearth and home, then by all means, invite ‘im in.”

Aelweir’s aldorman stalked back into the cottage. His wife’s shoulders sagged. She looked up at Eskel with an almost apologetic gaze. “Won’t you come in?”

The question was absurd after that kind of welcome. “Thanks,” Eskel said. He followed them into the cottage, sitting across from Vaclav at a table that stood empty except for a few candles and a bottle half full of cheap booze. 

“Can I get you some tea?” the woman said.

“Katarzina. He’s not gettin’ tea.” Vaclav’s tone was iron, final. His rheumy eyes found Eskel, and his tone relaxed into something almost conversational. “Understand, witchman. We have particular ways here in Aelweir. We live close to the land, keep to the natural law that lets us survive a land we’ve got no business survivin’. And you, well. Ya’re as unnatural as they come, aintchya?”

These conversations never led anywhere good. So Eskel shrugged. “Like the trouble you’ve got?”

“Hm.” Vaclav dragged his fingers along the line of his jaw. “Well. Ya read the notice. Whattaya make of our troubles?”

“Haven’t, actually. Heard a tip from a traveler. I never saw your notice.” 

“A rumor of a notice!” Vaclav slapped his hand on the table. “Don’t that take all. How’re ya gonna find what ya’re lookin’ for, eh? When ya’ve no idea what we called ya here for?” 

Katarzina swallowed. “We could… _tell_ him what’s in the notice, dear.” 

He whirled on her. “Will ya let me talk to the witchman, or ya plannin’ to interrupt with more of yer endless natterin’?”

Katarzina shrank into herself, staring down at the floorboards. Eskel’s eyes narrowed.

Vaclav turned back to Eskel. “It’s plague. When’s the last time you cured a plague, witchman?”

Eskel was still watching Katarzina. It took him a moment to reply. “Your problem’s plague? Not monsters?”

“Aye.” Vaclav nodded firmly, his smirk returning. 

“You call a pellar?”

“Sure ‘nough. Didn’t help much. But when do they ever?”

The alderman’s smirk spread lazily across his face now. Enjoying this. But Eskel caught movement out the corner of his eye and saw Katarzina’s fingers twining nervously against each other. 

“What kind of plague?” Eskel pressed.

“ _The_ plague,” Vaclav grated in the impatient tone of a man talking to an idiot. 

“Seen the plague hit a lotta different places. None of ‘em called on a witcher.” 

Katarzina’s knuckles turned white as she pressed her hands together. Eskel noted it, tried to catch her eye, but she’d fixed her gaze on the floor. 

“Somethin’s different about this plague,” Eskel continued. “Or folk wouldn’tve asked you to post a notice.”

“Yeh, folk wanted it,” Vaclav scoffed. “Insisted on it, ‘gainst all reason. Even raised coin in secret for nigh-on a month, and told me to put out a notice or they would. But that’s people for ya. Death comes, folk get desperate. Want to believe someone’s comin’ to save ‘em.”

Eskel looked between the aldorman and his wife. Katarzina. He caught her eyes flicking away from him. 

“How ‘bout you?” Eskel said.

Tense silence passed until Katarzina looked up and realized he was looking back at her. “What’s that, sir?”

“The plague,” Eskel said. “Think it’s natural?”

Eskel could feel Vaclav’s glare on him. Katarzina shifted her weight under Eskel’s steady gaze. 

“Well,” she stammered. “Ah. The plague itself seems familiar. Folk catch ill, there are horrid fits of vomiting and… the other end, too.” Eskel nodded to show he understood. “There’s fever, sweats, terrible nightmares. Some nights, it was like the whole village was screaming. Everyone who’s caught it passes on within the week.”

“What else?” Eskel asked. 

Katarzina took a deep breath. “Only the men catch it, sir.” She ducked her head quickly. 

Eskel sat up straighter. “Only the men? After a month?”

“More than a month, sir,” she said. “It took us a bit of time to get the notice out. The money was quite a sum. The first took sick, oh, almost two months past.”

Vaclav’s fingernails clacked against the glass bottle, the only object of his narrowed gaze.

“Seems a pretty important detail,” Eskel said pointedly. Either Vaclav didn’t hear him or he chose not to respond. So Eskel returned his attention to Katarzina. “Two months, huh. How many sick?”

Katarzina’s look at Vaclav seemed to ask permission. He occupied himself glaring at the bottle, stopping to take a swig before setting it down again. “Many. All men, boys. Nearly all we’ve got.” 

Vaclav gave her no acknowledgement. She took a breath and continued. “Angrim got sick first,” she said. “No sign of how—one day he was in the fields, trying to train that hellish mutt of Jurek’s to herd. Healthy as anything. By evening, he was retching his guts out. Awful sound-- you could hear him going all night, poor man. Wera did her best to take care of him, even tried to raise some coin to fetch the pellar over in Keilweidd, but he didn’t last the week. Mikolaj and his boys caught it next, all three of them at the same time. Poor little Szymon, he was but two years old.” 

“Did Mikolaj and Angrim have any connection?” Eskel asked. “Work the same fields, fish the same lake, drink together...?”

“Not more than anyone else here. If anything, less-- they live on opposites of the village. Lived.”

“Hm. Alright. So Mikolaj and his three boys caught it. What happened next?”

“ _Two_ boys. Three of them all together.” Katarzina sighed. “They all passed. Three deaths in four days. And on it went, a few men or boys at a time. We did send for the pellar after little Szymon went. He came, gave folk herbs to make teas, hang charms in the house, such-like. It helped, for a little while. But folk died all the same.”

She was like a singer who always sang duets-- she kept looking to her husband for the other half of the song, but only the bottle held his attention. Eskel wasn’t even sure he was still listening. 

“Folk try to leave?” Eskel asked.

Vaclav snorted. So he was listening after all. “Land’s been ours for generations. ‘sides, where would they bleedin’ go? No place to go, no coin to pay if they ‘ad.”

“So,” Katarzina continued, made slightly more confident by her husband’s addition, “folk guessed that it wasn’t natural, and we started pulling coin together for…” She fluttered a hand in Eskel’s direction. “Took quite awhile, but we managed. And now you’ve come-- too late for many. We’ve already blunted our axes on wood to burn the dead.”

There it was. The source of the smell that had led him to Aelweir: funeral pyres.

Eskel angled his head toward Katarzina until she looked up at him. “Could be a natural explanation. The kind of work that the men do—there a chance that they’ve been exposed to contagion that the women haven’t?”

Katarzina shook her head. “We thought that, at first. Folk were afraid to work their fields in case there was some corruption in the soil. But people have to eat, so women’ve been taking the work of their menfolk. Lidka—that’s Mikolaj’s wife—she’s taken up his shepherding staff and gone everywhere he’s gone, eaten everything he ate, drank from the same river. She’s hearty as an ox still. Same all across the village. No woman or girl’s caught so much as a sniffle.” 

“Mm. And I’m guessin’ that the sick were cared for by wives, daughters, mothers who’re all still healthy.” Eskel leaned back on the bench. “Yeah, no way that’s natural. Local folk have any theories?”

“Some say it’s a dryad curse. Others’re convinced that there’s a witch working her evil will from the woods here.”

“A witch who’s cursed every individual male in the village, two-year-old boys included? Folk seen any signs to suggest that?”

Katarzina shook her head. “First time I’ve ever heard of witches in these parts. Now everytime a crow flies by, people start muttering their prayers, making the sign-against-evil.”

Eskel turned to appraise Vaclav, letting his senses reach for the tiny pieces of information he usually ignored. Ruddy skin, heart rate too fast and a beat off-rhythm. The shaky heart health of a devoted drunkard. Breath clear, though. Nothing audible in the lungs, no scent of taint in the blood.

“You look alright to me,” Eskel said. 

Vaclav shrugged, more of a quick jerk of his shoulders. He took another swig from the bottle and wouldn’t look at Eskel. 

“There aren’t many left now,” Katarzina said quietly. “There’s Lukaz, if he’s still breathing. He was in a bad way last night. Henryk and Iwan have it, too. Both hearty lads, we had hope for them. But it seems hardiness is no help. And the other night… I took Rasz with me to go see the fireflies. We’ve been keeping him inside, trying to be as careful as we can. He was only out of my sight for a moment. Next thing I know, he’s blubbering that the fireflies are mean and he wants to go home. He fell ill that night.”

“Rasz?” Eskel asked. “That your boy?”

A shadow came over them both, even in Vaclav’s unfocused state. 

“Yes,” Katarzina said softly. “The only child we have left.”

Vaclav and Katarzina’s gazes drifted to the same spot, suspended over the table. As one, both of their bodies bowed. Something in Eskel recognized the weight hanging in the air between them and gave a dull answering pang.

“I’m sorry,” Eskel said.

“But you’re here now.” This from Katarzina, whose eyes gleamed with the feverish hope of the truly desperate. “You’ll stop what’s happening. And you’ll save him.”

She wasn’t staring at his scars anymore. Those weakly hopeful eyes searched him, trying to find the answer they wanted.

“I’ll try,” Eskel said. “Let’s start with the plague symptoms. Your son, Rasz-- alright if I take a look at him?”

“He sleeps most of the day,” Katarzina said. “ But if you’d think it’d help...”

Eskel nodded. “No need to wake ‘im. I just want a look.”

“Go and look all ya want. For all the good it’ll do ya.” Vaclva rose abruptly from the table. “I’m to see to the mid-day Federbludd rites now.”

“A festival?” Eskel let one eyebrow rise in his otherwise impassive face. “Sure that’s smart in a plague?” 

Vaclav’s chuckle sounded sick. “Only the women-folk’re strong enough to speak the rites now. ‘Sides, these rites are necessary. No village in these parts lasts long. Soil goes bad at the blink of an eye, storms roll in, wild places show ya they’ve still got teeth. Aelweir, though. We’ve lasted. We know how to honor our traditions, keep our folk strong. Federbludd goes way back, to the time of the treefuckers.”

 _“Vaclav.”_ Katarzina’s eyes were wide.

“What? I’ll call ‘em that. I’ll call ‘em worse.” He narrowed a bleary eye at Eskel. “Bark sniffers don’t want to give up, neither. They killed my father when I was but a boy.”

The man had a lot of creative names for elves. Eskel nodded to show he understood, but didn’t say anything. Vaclav seemed too ready to launch into another slurred tirade. 

“So Federbludd’s all the more important,” Vaclav said. “Keep to the land. The natural law, set down by our forefathers! Even when it calls fer sacrifice. Even when the sacrifice is near too-great. Surely ya know ‘bout that all-important rite, witchman?”

“‘fraid not. Never heard of Federbludd.”

“Ayyye!” Vaclav raised his arms to the ceiling in a drunkard’s dramatic supplication. “And folk wonder why the world’s comin’ to pieces. No sense of ‘eritage or honor left! But then... you witchmen, they take ya as babes. Ya don’t even have a father, do ya?”

Katarzina came to the rescue. “Everyone has a father, dear.”

“Aye.” Vaclav smirked. “Well. Since yers didn’t teach ya: Federbludd’s the Festival of Father’s Blood. A time to honor what ya’ve been given and to grow it to ripeness. The way trees die but live on in their saplin’s, so our fathers live in us. This time a’ year, when the rye and barley come in, we’re to pay our fathers homage. We say the rites and prayers from the new moon to the full, and on the full we make our sacrifices. Gifts to show the harvest of what they gave us as seeds. Federbludd Main’s near upon us. Night o’ the full moon.”

Vaclav scratched at something on the back of his neck, where sweat had dried into crust. “Doubt ya’ll find much,” he said. “But if ya find anything, find it by Federbludd Main.” 

“If we’re gonna make that happen,” Eskel said, “let’s talk payment. Assumin’ I’m still hired.”

“Seventy crowns,” Vaclav said promptly. “Assumin’ ya do work.”

Eskel suppressed a wince. “Seventy?”

“Aye. That’s a lord’s sum ‘round here, and that’s what it’ll stay.”

 _Seventy._ But what did he expect? Aelweir was no Novigrad. “Fine. Figurin’ you want proof of completion?”

Vaclav waved a careless arm. “Sure. Head of a witch, horn of a demon. Whatever ya find, lop it off an’ bring it over.” He rose from the table. 

Eskel raised an eyebrow. He stood up as well. “Lemme ask you somethin’. Your men are dead. Right? Nearly all of ‘em. You still don’t think there’s anythin’ to find, but you’re signin’ off on this contract anyway.” Eskel paused. He wanted to say _what the hell are you thinking_. Instead he settled for “Why?”

Vaclav paused. He rolled his closed lips over his teeth, as if he needed to work something out from his gums.

“Because folk won’t believe.” The crags of Vaclav’s face fractured into a bitter grin. “Tell ‘em all you want about natural law and the right order of things. Folk nod along but still stray from the right ways. What if everythin’ in nature did that? What if rain decided to fall up? Chaos. Nothin’ll know its right place and men’ll become _beasts._ ”

Vaclav spat. His spittle hit the wall and dripped there. Katarzina flinched and looked away.

“There’re consequences to breakin’ law,” Vaclav sneered, “especially natural law. Consequences ya can’t escape.”

“‘Natural law.’ _What_ natural law?” Eskel demanded, and he couldn’t keep the impatient edge out of his voice. 

The sound was so soft that even Eskel could barely hear it: Katarzina sucking in breath, her heart suddenly pounding. 

Vaclav grew still. He turned toward Eskel slowly, like a taut rope ready to snap.

“Watch yerself, mutant,” Vaclav said softly.

Katarzina’s voice slipped in so apologetically, with such subservience, it was as if Eskel imagined her speaking. “He’s not from here, Vaclav. He doesn’t know our ways.”

Vaclav’s face had become a battleground. “‘Course he don’t.” Vaclav’s voice dropped to a guttural rumble. “‘E’s an outsider. Like I said. How’s this thing gonna ‘elp us, eh, Kat? Didn’t I ask that?” 

Eskel held himself still. Whatever raged inside Vaclav must have grown quieter, as the aldorman gave a long sigh and wiped a palm thick with callous over his face. 

“Natural law,” Vaclav repeated, this time in a steadier voice, with eyes gone tired. “The land ‘ears what’s in men’s hearts. It gives and takes accordin’ to his strength, so ya know a true man by the state of ‘is home. Look at my home. Even you, an outsider. Whattaya see? Sickness and men dyin’. The strong ones, dyin’.” His mouth curled in what should have been a smile, but it was a ghoul’s rictus grin. “Means the old ‘uns are right. I’m not half the man my father was when ‘e was aldorman. The land sees it and punishes it. And that’s all the reason ya’ll find for this, and all the help ya can give it.” Vaclav touched his dirt-stained fingers to his chest in an improvised salute. “See if ya can hunt that down and stick it on yer hook, witchman.” 

Having said his peace, Vaclav walked from the cottage with slumped shoulders and lowered head. Eskel stood staring after him, at the grain of the front door that still rattled in its frame. He didn’t like the man, didn’t trust him any more than he’d trust an animal who had that same look Vaclav had had in his eyes. But at that moment, all Eskel felt for him was a distant pity. 

After a moment he turned to Katarzina. “Is that really what he believes? That all this is his fault, somehow?”

Katarzina avoided his gaze. “It’s been a very trying time. All of us are under a great deal of strain.”

She was using the polite, generic tone that some women used with strangers. It filled the air with words that meant nothing. Those wouldn’t help; he’d have to push. “Sure,” Eskel said. “His village’s strugglin’, too. There somethin’ else goin’ on here? Does he _want_ a cure?”

“Of course he does.” Katarzina’s eyes flashed. _Our boy is sick._.” 

Eskel drew his eyebrows together, made himself the image of a witcher who cared only about his contract and could not feel. “Sure about that? Sounds to me like he’s callin’ it the gods’ will, and leavin’ it at that.”

Katarzina squared her shoulders. “My husband is a faithful man, witcher. Faithful to the sacred ways that have kept this village strong when all around us have failed. You must have passed the ruins on the way here. It takes strength to keep to those ways in trying times. If you’re suggesting that he doesn’t care about this village…”

Eskel held his palms up. “Not sayin’ that. Just tryin’ to understand what’s happenin’ here. Not many clients hire me as a…” He grappled for the words. “Like he’s darin’ me to find somethin.”

Katarzina glared at him a moment longer. Then she sighed in a long breath that took the fire out of her eyes and the tension from her shoulders. “It’s just been a very difficult time,” she said. The generic polished tone had fallen from her voice this time. Now she sounded weary, worn thin. 

Eskel leaned back against the table. “Wanna tell me about it?”

Katarzina sighed again before answering. “This land has never forgiven softness. This winter just past, one of our granaries burned down. Nearly drove some folk to the brink of starvation. Our old folk’ve never liked Vaclav, so of course they said that this was a sign-- that the land’s punishing us for a weak leader. What he said about his father-- that’s their talk. He was a hard man, but folk respected him. And now comes Federbludd. Vaclav’s meant to show the fathers what he’s brought to harvest-- to show what he’s done as aldorman himself-- and this year… it’s all ruined.” 

“Mm. So, land’s punishin’ him. For anythin’ specific?”

Katarzina raised her eyes to his. They were full of pain. “Being a weakling.”

Not exactly much to go on. No more than the drunk man had said himself. “Think that’s true?”

“You saw that Vaclav thinks it’s true.” Katarzina shook her head slightly as her eyes retreated to a far corner of the room. “All this talk about ‘natural law.’ That’s something his father used to say. Vaclav never used to believe it. Used to scoff at it, even. He’d watch the young people drink themselves sick after Yule and say, ‘look, natural law at work.’ But everything started going wrong at once, and suddenly…” She lifted her arms and let them fall limp. “He started talking like his father.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Eskel said. “What do _you_ think?”

Katarzina dropped her eyes to her hands again but she no longer rubbed at the invisible spot. The room filled with the soft sound of a long, slow sigh filling her lungs, shuddering there, and blowing shakily out again. 

“I think my son is dying, witcher. I think something made him sick. What, I don’t know, but it’s not natural.” Another shaky breath. “And if that’s the will of the gods… well. The gods and I will just have to disagree.”

Eskel raised his eyebrows. She didn’t see it-- she was staring resolutely at nothing, the set of her jaw tightening. 

“You didn’t grow up ‘round here,” he said, “did you?”

Her lips almost formed a grim smile, but fell short. “No. I did not.”

She sighed, a shallower breath that let her pretend to brush that pain aside. “Anyway. Don’t worry about the contract. Vaclav may be a proud man, but if you help us, he’ll make sure you’re paid.”

“Glad he at least put up the coin.”

“Well. He didn’t, really. That was the townsfolk.” The line of Katarzina’s mouth stiffened. “Mostly Evva. Another reason he didn’t much like the idea.”

“Evva.” Eskel tilted his head. “Yeah, met her on the way in. Take it there’s no love lost between those two.”

Katarzina’s voice hardened. “No.”

“Mm hm.” Well. If shitty pay, a useless aldorman, and superstitious townsfolk were the worst problems he encountered on this contract, he’d count the job easy. “Then… first step, guess I oughta earn my pay. If you don’t mind, like to take a look at your boy now.”

Katarzina nodded. “You don’t need to wake him, right?”

“No. I’ll be quiet.”

Katarzina motioned him toward a closed door. She creaked it open and peered through the crack with one eye. Satisfied, she turned back to Eskel and waved him forward. Eskel caught the smell of sick before he was through the doorway: overheated bloodstream, sweat, a faint trace of diarrhea and vomit clinging to the air. In a room darkened by thick cloth hung over the windows, a little boy lay in soaked sheets. No older than twelve. His eyes were closed and his arm curled around a little stuffed pig woven from pink and yellow yarn. The maker had even made a necklace of little red roses around its neck. Eskel smiled a little. Some of the new boys had come to Kaer Morhen with toys like that, the ones who weren’t orphans and had something to pack. Katarzina would have to burn it if the boy survived.

Eskel knelt at the boy’s bedside and, very gently, pressed two fingers against the bottom of his jaw. Lymph nodes swollen on both sides. Lifted Rasz’s arm, he felt into the armpits. Buboes there, too. The boy didn’t stir as Eskel lay his arm back down. One last check. Eskel shifted to the bottom of the bed, inspecting the sole of one foot that stuck out of the sheets. A black patch darkened the ball of the foot, like a parchment held too close to a candle and scorched. Classic plague symptoms. Tissue necrosis, fever, gastrointestinal distress, clear lungs, no vibrations from his medallion: everything pointed to an ordinary septicemic infection. Could explain why the victims didn’t pass it on to anyone else after getting sick. But how had Rasz caught it in the first place? 

Eskel cast a weakened version of the Igni sign. A spark of fire popped between his fingers, enough to shine a quick flash of light through the room. He focused on the skinny leg and arms protruding from the sheets and found what he sought on the left calf: tiny red dots clustered on the skin. Many more than he’d expected. In fact, they flecked nearly every inch of the boy’s leg.

Katarzina made a tiny sound from the doorway. Eskel had seen enough. He stood and walked as quietly as he could from the room, Katarzina closing the door behind him. 

“Well.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you think?”

“Black plague for sure. All the usual symptoms.” Eskel tilted his head. “How’s your wildlife ‘round here? Any vermin problems?” 

“I know why you’re asking. Looks like flea bites, don’t they? I said the same thing.” She shook her head. “But we’ve not had any problems with fleas this year. Jurek’s mutt had a few in his ears. Wera killed the poor thing, just to be safe, but that didn’t stop the plague. The fields’ve been kept clear-- well, they were, when we had enough hands to keep them that way. And besides, what kind of flea only bites men?”

“Hm,” Eskel grunted. 

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” 

“Not exactly. Seen sickness before, though, the kind without explanation. Sometimes it’s folk keepin’ a latrine too close to the cook-fires. Could be poison, magical or otherwise. Won’t know ‘til I find out more.”

Katarzina didn’t say anything at first. “And curses? Could it be a curse, the way Vaclav and the others say?”

“Maybe,” Eskel said. “If it were, that’s strong magic. I’ll find traces somewhere.”

They both began walking toward the cottage door. “Well,” Katarzina said, “if you need anything at all, come speak with us. And-- pardon my asking, but-- ah.” She tucked her lips in tight. “Well-- you are what you are, but you’re a man as well… or…?”

Eskel smiled. “I know what you’re sayin’. No worries. We can’t get sick.”

“Well!” Some of the tightness in Katarzina’s face relaxed. “That’s a relief.”

“Thanks for askin’.” Eskel opened the cottage door. Thick ropes of the white woven flowers hung outside. “Almost forgot ‘bout these. They’re a nice touch. Made it easier to find your place.”

“You like them?” Katarzina smiled faintly. “They’re meant to be sandwort.”

“Sandwort...? Arenaria?” Eskel pulled one of the woven ropes closer. Five white petals opening around a pale green center. Up close, the resemblance was almost uncanny. “Yeah, that’s arenaria, alright. Surprisin’. Not a plant that gets much attention.” From non-witchers, at least.

“When I was young, I read a lovely story about sandwort.” Katarzina cast a soft smile over the hanging strands. “The ninety-six trials of Enovin. Have you heard of it?” 

Odd to hear someone in a town like this talk about reading. He hadn’t noticed any books in her cottage. Eskel shook his head. 

She continued: “It’s about the time of the elves, before humans came. The elves angered the gods- I forget how exactly, but they did, and the land became barren. The elves were starving. They abandoned their land-- all except one, an elf named Enovin. A seer told him that the gods would not restore the land until the elves completed ninety-six trials. Since all of the other elves had left, Enovin set out to complete the ninety-six trials alone.”

“Somethin’ tells me they involved more than goin’ down to the river and fetchin’ a pail of water.”

“Indeed. It was only because of the elves’ long lives that he got to the seventy-second trial before he died. But the gods were so impressed by his devotion that they restored the land anyway. And they marked all the sites of Enovin’s trials with a patch of blooming sandwort.”

“Nice story,” Eskel said. “He didn’t win because he finished the trials. He won because he never stopped givin’ a damn.”

Katarzina’s smile widened, though there was something sad in it, too. “Well, most folk think of it as a love story. I left out the part where he was in love with the Elf Queen and worked the trials as a service to her. But your version is lovely, too.”

“Y’know, rich folk pay good coin for this kinda thing. Country crafts, and a charmin’ story to go with it? You’d roll in coin if you sold ‘em.”

“I didn’t make them. My daughter did.”

“If your daughter ever wants to sell ‘em.” 

The lines of Katarzina’s face deepened and, too late, Eskel remembered what Vaclav and Katarzina had said earlier: Rasz was their only surviving child. 

“Oh.” The realization sank in. “Ah... sorry.”

Katarzina waved her hand, but she wasn’t looking at him. 

A silence followed. Katarzina broke it with a sigh, a shake of her head, and a weary smile that said they were leaving the subject behind. “Do you have a name?” 

Not a question he’d expected. Most people were happy to call him _witcher_ , _witchman_ , or _freak._ “Eskel,” he said, after a moment to recover. 

“Eskel? That’s so… normal.”

She stole a sidelong glance at him. He had his eyebrows raised. They broke into a slow shared chuckle and the awkward moment passed. Now he noticed the deep lines around her mouth, the sunkenness of her eyes. This was not the face of a woman who had much reason to laugh. 

“Hate to disappoint,” he said. “Expectin’ somethin’ _witchier_?”

“Yes. I grew up with an Eskel, in Vergen. I think he apprenticed with a cobbler. You don’t much resemble him.”

Vergen. He vaguely remembered passing the city at one point. It explained why she could read. “I bet. He’s probably got better boots.”

“Yes, probably.” Her smile retreated behind that polite distance again. “Well, I’m… thankful for your profession, Eskel. Do you think…?” She didn’t finish her question, but she didn’t have to. 

“You should know I can't make promises. I can look for the source of infection, but that in there--” Eskel pointed at the cottage. “That's plague. Nothin’ I can do for that.”

Katarzina nodded. “If you find the source of infection… will that stop the plague?”

“I don't know.”

They stood for a long moment without speaking. Katarzina raised her head slowly, her eyes wet but her chin lifted. “Do what you can, Eskel. It’s more than we’ve done.”

She went back into the cottage and closed the door, leaving the strings of arenarias swaying behind her.


	3. A Gift for the Fathers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eskel does some investigation and discovers the source of the plague.

“Keep movin’, mutant. I’ve nothin’ to say to ya.”

“Hmph. That may be and it mayn’t. How’s a demonspawn meant to help us, eh? Answer me that.”

“Pah, pah. Go bother one of those young folk who know so much. ‘Hire a witcher!’ they said. I tell ya, Laszlo would never’ve tolerated such notions. Who’s Laszlo? The last true aldorman of Aelweir, far as I’m concerned! And I’ve no care who ‘ears me say it! Now there was a true man. Never would’ve married some stuck-up city girl out of Vergen with no knowledge of our ways. Never would’ve let a bunch of girls pressure ‘im into bringin’ in cat-eyed demon freaks. Not like his good-for-nothin’ drunkard of a son.”

“Oh, the plague’s natural, alright. It’s natural as rain. The land gets angry, the land retaliates.”

“Ha! Don’t go pokin’ your beak where it don’t belong. Now ya’ve taken enough of my time. Off with ya. Mind ya, mutant-- the sooner ya move along out of Aelweir, the better we’ll all be. Nothin’ a beast like yerself can do but make our troubles worse.”

***

“She won’t talk to you, Master Witcher. Her husband forbade her to speak to any man but ‘er father and ‘imself. They’re both dead now, so that means she talks to us girls and their graves. Can I ‘elp you with somethin’?”

“Ah, yeh. I gave a few coins to the contract fund. Plain as day, there’s a witch afoot. Everyone knows they live out in the woods. Ya sacrifice a boy-child to their darksome gods, and in return, they grant terrible powers.”

“Signs? I hope ya don’t mistake me for someone acquainted with witchcraft, Master Witcher. I don’t rightly know what a sign o’ witchcraft might be. But ‘ere’s what I gather: the first plague showed around Madergidd. So I got to supposin’--”

“Madergidd? Why, it’s the celebration o’ the start o’ summer. The Festival of the Mother’s Gift, when mothers present their daughters to the men of the village, and the men choose which ‘uns they’ll claim as their own. There’re bonfires, feasts--”

“What! No, no, no. Belleteyn’s a heathen rite. We’ve no traffic in that debauchery here. Mind yer tongue, there’re children about. They don’t need yer foreign devilry in their ‘eads. So what was I sayin’-- those witch whores, they musta poisoned the Madergidd rights. Peace in the hearth, peace in the earth, as Vaclav says. With no men around, how’re we to honor right ways in our ‘omes? It’s their devil-work, for certain.”

***

“Aye. I knew it’d come to this. A witcher in Aelweir-- Laszlo’s riotin’ in his grave. But-- suppose the best thing for a demon is another demon. At least yer a demon on our side, eh?”

“It’s a witch, alright. One o’ them treehumpin’ kind. Ya know because of the crows. They all love squirrels and black birds, bend ‘em to their will. Mark my words, ye’ll see ‘em flockin’ at twilight. Freezes the spine, it does.”

“No, they don’t just flock to the funeral pyres. Ya figure I’m stupid? Them barklickers, they’ve all sorts of powers over animals. Goats. Birds. Ask Jana. She’ll tell ya.”

***

Eskel swiped the back of his arm across his forehead for what must have been the twentieth time. At this point, he was just moving the sweat around instead of wiping it off. 

When he’d begun his circuit of the village, asking anyone he found about the plague and its victims, he’d expected resistance. He found that, and something that might have been better or worse: a superstitious town’s eagerness to volunteer the slightest suspicion. When Eskel heard about a particularly suspect murder of crows for the third time, he wondered if the townsfolk had rehearsed together or separately. He dutifully checked window frames for hidden scratched runes, doorways for any nefarious buried poppets, and cottages for whiffs of strange, sorcerous herbs. Not even a vague hint of witchcraft. He checked the spot on the river where Katarzina had taken Rasz to watch fireflies, too. A few flies buzzed around, as usual for a water source, but nothing else. 

At another suggestion, he’d spent a couple dirty hours investigating the village livestock. No devilish markings or secret sorcerous signs there. No fleas, either. A billy goat nearly succeeded in butting Eskel in the ribs, and a wandering pup kept trying to follow him until its dam picked it up by the scruff and trotted off. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary about the animals. 

Only two pieces of information sounded useful so far. First, the plague’s spread pattern: it made no sense for an ordinary disease. It tended to spread to entire households at once, but men who worked together side by side would catch it a month apart. There were no clusters he could find, not from water sources, food sources, work proximity, latrine habits. Second useful fact: the disease symptoms were worse at night. After dusk, the victims’ delusions escalated to nightmares. Fevers spiked, seizures increased, the red marks darkened or multiplied. Reports seemed universal, almost as much as the general suspicion of crows. 

That was the sum total of his morning and early afternoon work. His latest lead was Jana, a woman somewhere “in the rye.” As Eskel trudged through the mid-afternoon heat, he wondered if he’d ever remember to ask the right questions in the moment, like: _what does Jana look like?_ and _which rye field?_ Soon as he talked with her and heard the latest version of the witches-crows-evil story, he’d find somewhere to take his armor off and splash water down his neck. Unless he could scare off the village’s hypothetical witches with the stink of leather and sweat. 

Two weeks ago, he and the last witchers of the Wolf School had fought off the Wild Hunt. Now, he was back to his ordinary work-- tedious, frustrating, yet somehow comforting. Every contract had a rhythm. Some contracts meant gabbing over unpronounceable Toussaintois dishes at high-faluting balls, some meant arguing with a troll until he could bribe it with a sack of river stones to move on. Some meant steel or silver, adrenaline, death’s terror and rush. But every job simplified. While he was working, only the contract mattered. Every step had a clear purpose… even the steps he took now, crossing the sun-baked field with the spikes on his armor ready to singe flesh at a touch.

A handful of women labored in a field meant for twice as many workers. He came in range of one of them. “‘scuse me,” he called out.

The woman looked up. Her forearms rippled as she steadied her scythe. 

“You Jana?”

“Nope.” The woman whose name was not Jana returned to the rye. 

“Good talk,” Eskel muttered under his breath. She didn’t show any intention of acknowledging his presence again, so he crossed into her range of vision, taking care to remain beyond the range of a scythe swing. “You know where I can find Jana?” 

The woman stopped her swinging for a second time. “Nope. And I’d appreciate you lettin’ me get back to work.” 

“‘course. Only need a moment,” Eskel said. “Anyone else know where Jana is? Tryin’ to help your plague trouble--”

“‘course you are. You people are _always_ helpful, aren’t you.” She leaned over her scythe handle and spat into the dirt.

 _You people._ Another one. “See you’re busy. I’ll be on my way.”

“Let me help you.” The woman tilted her scythe until the blade pointed toward the ground. “Hell’s _that_ way. Get back where you belong...” He could see the choice balancing in her mind, the decision to go ahead and hurl the name at him like a Dancing Star: _”...freak.”_

Usually the word glanced off him, an arrow deflected by a Quen shield. But Kaer Morhen was gone and this time, it hit. The woman must have seen something in his eyes. She leaned away from him instinctively, almost tripping over herself. 

A voice interrupted them from a distance: “Witcher!” 

The woman’s eyes flicked toward the sound and back to Eskel. Her lips curled into a cruel smile. They both knew he couldn’t react now. “Like calls to like.”

Eskel looked for the source of the voice. The shape hurrying toward them was familiar. 

“Evva,” he said with an effort of memory. 

“Witcher. Hello again! I was worried you missed Vaclav’s house.” Evva carried her own scythe. She planted the bottom grip in the dirt and looked from Eskel to the woman and back to Eskel. “Everything alright here?” 

The woman wrinkled her nose. She bobbed her head at Eskel. “Will be, once it stops botherin’ decent folk at work.” 

“It? What...” Evva’s eyes widened. “Darva. _He_ is here to help us.”

That same cruel smile. Darva returned to her work without another word.

“C’mon.” Eskel caught Evva’s eye, jerked his head toward a stretch of field where the rye had already been cropped. “Don’t waste your time.”

Evva met his gaze. She still didn’t look at his scars. One last glare at Darva, and then she turned and walked away from her beside Eskel.

“I hate that woman,” Evva said, once they were a decent distance away. “I’m so sorry.”

Eskel shrugged. “Used to it,” he said, which was usually true.

“That doesn’t matter. She should know better! I started to wonder after she didn’t donate anything to the notice fund, but…” Evva shook her head. “Nevermind. Forget her. Did you find Vaclav?” 

“Yeah, found him. He was kinda indisposed, but we sealed the deal.” 

Evva huffed. “Only _kind of_ indisposed? Must be your lucky day. So you’re officially hired now.”

“Yup. This is me workin’. Tryin’ to find Jana at the moment. Rumor has it she’s a local witch expert.”

“Everyone’s a witch expert these days.” Evva wiped her fingers across her glistening forehead. “A couple months ago, you never heard the word ‘witch’ mentioned. Now, suddenly, everyone has a great-aunt or a half-sister who cast spells in the spring to make the flowers grow.” 

“I noticed.”

Evva came to a halt and rested the grip of her scythe on the ground. “Do you think there’s a witch? Behind the plague?”

By his own professional standards, Eskel shouldn’t have answered. Too many pieces of information missing, too much risk in revealing his thoughts before he knew who to suspect. But right then, he didn’t give a damn. The afternoon sun melted thought. His mind bleared between the drip of sweat under his armor and the woman standing next to him-- her easy grip on the scythe, hair the color of honey in sunlight and plastered to the back of her neck. Clothes plain, because naturally, why would she wear something nice just to drench it with sweat, though she had put in the time to string a wooden pendant around her neck and a woven bracelet on her wrist and was that scent red cedar and lavender--

Focus.

“Could be,” Eskel said. “Feels like there’s intelligence at work. A selection process for victims. Who’s makin’ the selections, how, why-- still workin’ on that part.” 

Evva nodded. “I thought so.” 

“Yeah? Vaclav didn’t. Still doesn’t, ‘parently.”

“Vaclav’s ploughing useless.”

Yeah, all available evidence lined up with that. “Lemme ask you somethin’,” Eskel said. “Heard you raised a lot of the coin for the contract. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“Oh.” Evva smiled. “Don’t thank me. Someone had to. Nobody did, so I stepped in.” 

“Glad you did. Means I might eat sometime this week. You sound pretty sure a witcher’s needed here.”

“Yes.” Evva’s hand slid up and down the scythe handle. “Like you said-- there’s intelligence at work.”

“Do _you_ think it’s a witch?”

Evva wrapped both hands around the scythe and squinted into the distance. Eskel followed her gaze westward, where the gold of rye gave way to forest. 

“I don’t know much about witches.” Her words sounded as if they were meant for the woods as much as for him. “But I know a little about plagues. My mother lived through one, when she was a child. She always used to talk about how it caught them by surprise, when it shouldn’t have. A neighboring village caught it-- then another-- a month went by, nobody had it in her village. Everyone thought they were safe. Then, in a matter of days… it exploded. One week, nobody sick. The next, twenty, and two already dead. From there, it spread like fire. So she says. Our plague here-- it didn’t explode. A handful of men sicken every week. Never more than four, never fewer than two. The women, never. How does that work?”

Evva tilted her head at him. Eskel lifted his eyebrows to show that he was paying attention, but he didn’t move to speak. She had an air about her that she wasn’t done yet, that something else was building inside her to be said. 

Sure enough, Evva dropped her gaze to the dried dirt at their feet and sighed. “And, I don’t know. It’s been such a time here. Sometimes, I wonder if this village is cursed.” 

“Heard that, too,” Eskel said. “String of bad luck in these parts. Somebody thinks it’s a dryad curse. Vengeful spirits of the land, and all that.” 

“You must have talked to Wera.” 

“Dunno. She didn’t say her name. Big? Likes wearin’ blue?”

“That’s Wera.” Evva smiled faintly at the ground. 

“Strangely specific curse.” Eskel dragged his fingers along the underside of his jaw. They came off wet with sweat. “Wera, our blue-wearin’ friend-- she mentioned a barn burned down last winter. The one where half the folk stored their grain. That what you mean? When you say the village feels cursed?”

“Yes…”

That feeling again that she had more to say. Eskel waited.

Evva swallowed. “And… well. It’s more personal. I had a friend die last winter. My best friend here. So I guess this whole damned village feels cursed for me.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Evva shook her head, the motions fast and aggressive. “It’s not your fault.”

Eskel let his gaze settle on the distant shapes of women laboring in the rye until he could hear her heart rate settle again. 

“Seems a bit of a stretch,” Eskel said, “but… don’t suppose there’s a connection? Between the barn, your friend, this plague... If we’re talkin’ curses.”

Evva shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, the words a little nasal. “I mean, I’ve thought of it. All of the _shit_ that this village has gone through since winter. It feels like it ought to mean something. Like the gods are keeping balance for...” She trailed off and shrugged again. “Maybe they are.”

Eskel dropped his voice, made it gentle: “Your friend. If you don’t my askin’... how did she die?” 

“Cold.”

“...she caught a cold?”

“No.” Evva met Eskel’s gaze with a hard new cast to her face. “She died of cold.” 

Eskel blinked. He’d expected the usual answers: sickness, bandits, war, kicked by a horse, food poisoning. Maybe childbirth, if she was Evva’s age. “Where was she goin’, in wintertime?”

“She wasn’t.”

“She died of hypothermia in the village itself?”

“Yes.”

Eskel rested his thumbs on his waistbelt. The underside of the leather was damp with sweat. In the summer heat he could barely remember the feeling of cold, especially cold bad enough to kill. “Winter was that bad?” 

“No…” Evva’s fingers opened and closed on her scythe. “This… is an old-fashioned village. People still hang horseshoes on their doorways and put out saucers of milk for the domovoi. One time, a traveling merchant came by. He had some books in stock. One of them talked about racial equality for elves and dwarves. I think it was fiction, even. The older folks ran him out of town.” Evva sighed. “Mira didn’t traffic in old notions. That’s why-- that’s what was so great about her.”

“Mira? That your friend?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. If you’ve heard anyone talking about a Dajmira…? Same person.” 

“Nope.”

Evva’s lips quirked. “Okay. Well. What was I saying… Mira, she didn’t abide old ways. Unlike her father. Very traditional man. He, ah… he got so mad at her. Called her rebellious, debaucherous... I don’t think we knew how mad he got. One day he locked her up in a barn, in the cold, and said she’d stay out there until she learned obedience. And then...” 

Evva opened her palm. It trembled slightly. She opened her hand as if letting something go. 

These damned ass-backward villages. “Nobody said a word?” Eskel said. “Stopped him, took her in?”

Evva’s knuckles turned white against the scythe. Her eyes gleamed wet. “She’s his daughter. His _property_. I told you, this is an old-fashioned village.”

Eskel inclined his head. A daughter frozen to death to teach her obedience. What a fucked-up story. But then, he didn’t tend to hear stories about happy marriages, healthy communities, well-tended sacred grounds. Those didn’t need witchers. 

“Last winter, huh,” Eskel said. “And look what’s left of the village now. How’d you put it? Feels like the gods are keepin’ balance?” 

Evva drew an unsteady breath deep into her lungs. “Feels like it, doesn’t it? What kind of village lets that happen to someone? _Wants_ it to happen?”

Eskel knew. He’d seen plenty. Some people could ignore the annoyance of actual history, could insist on a simpler time when men were men and women and non-humans knew their place. A past that never existed. 

“The kind of village,” Eskel said, “that someone might hate. Bad enough to get revenge.”

Evva started. “Revenge? It’s a bit late for that. Mira’s dead.”

“Dead. Maybe not gone.” 

“What are you saying?” Evva’s eyes narrowed. “You think… that she’s _haunting_ us?”

“Dunno. Not sure yet. Tell you what I do think: I think Mira’s father locked her up to die. And now, just before a festival for forefathers, all the men are dyin’.” 

Evva stared at him, her eyes wide. “No. It’s not just the _men_ , even little boys are catching it. Mira would never do that.” 

“If she stuck around, she’s not Mira anymore.”

“No. No.” Evva’s eyes darted left and right. “Impossible. How could she-- just because--” The darting eyes grew still. “Why plague? Even if she stayed on, somehow. Even if it’s her killing them all, the boys, too… do ghosts give people plague?” 

True, they did not. It was the weakest point in his still-forming theory. If everything in Evva’s story checked out, just the way she said-- if her friend Mira had come back as a wraith after dying of hypothermia, how would her wraith spread disease? It didn’t add up. 

“Maybe not,” Eskel admitted. “But all my other leads have me chasin’ crows and goats. This at least sounds like somethin’.” 

“How do you make sure?”

“One thing everyone agrees on: the symptoms are worse at night. Come nightfall, I’ll go searchin’. See if I find anything-- or anyone.”

Evva’s expression steadily lost its frantic motion, hardening into something steelier. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said. 

“Could be. If I am, I’ll go looking for Jana again. Keep an eye out for crows and witch-knots.”

Evva’s lips tightened and curled at the edges. Not quite a smile. 

“Thanks, Evva.” Eskel smiled, remembering a second later how people tended to react to his smiles and the way they pulled at his scars. “You’ve helped.”

Once again, Evva didn’t seem to notice his scars. “Wait. How do you know my name?”

“Your mom said it. Grandma, maybe? Out in the fields, when I first came through.”

“Oh, right. Nana.” Evva paused. One finger of her grip tapped at the scythe’s handle but a few more seconds passed before she could lift her voice again, almost awkward in its shyness: “If you know my name… might I ask yours?”

“Fair’s fair. It’s Eskel.”

“In your work, Eskel-- do you always kill?”

“No. I don’t get paid to kill monsters. I get paid to handle ‘em.” He shrugged. “Killin’s only one of the ways.”

“Alright.” She stood staring at the ground for a moment, seemed to catch herself, looked up with a distant smile. “Well. I should get back to work. I hope you find… whatever will help you.” She turned and had almost walked away when she stopped and tilted her head in his direction. “Do your work well, Eskel. Please.”

She walked through the baked expanse of the rye fields, this time without looking back. Eskel watched her go. 

She was pretty. Sharp, too. He let himself think it so he could acknowledge it and move on.

So, a wraith. Most likely possibility. He could handle wraiths. A little spectre oil, some practice with Yrden, a triple-check of his silver blade-- doable. By sunset tomorrow, if it all worked out, he’d be on his way to Flotsam with enough coin for a hot meal, a full stein, and a couple nights on a real bed. Maybe company for that bed, too, if rates were cheap. 

Evva had nearly vanished into the rye. Back straight, to all appearances ready to work-- after he’d just explained that her dead friend might have come back as a vengeful, death-dealing spirit. That used to bother him the most in this line of work: not the monsters, but the people who had to lose them twice. Another day on the job, different and the same.

Eskel turned in the opposite direction of Evva, toward the field’s edge where he’d left Scorpion to graze. He had a potion to brew-- and then, damn it, a trip to the river. The crust of sweat on his skin had hardened into a second armor. 

***

Night over Aelweir. Darkness and a welcome chill. Smells: cooking-fires, poultices in the houses of the sick and dying, dirt, a latrine somewhere to the east, a cat, a burnt-out pyre for the dead. Sounds: voices muffled inside cottages, bats rustling in the trees, pots and dishes colliding, coughing. New sound: a cat hissing. 

Eskel exhaled the tension from his gut and shoulders. 

Emptied out, he opened to stillness. Waxing gibbous moon, night breeze. Overhead, the stars. Calm. He held the hush in his lungs.

Eskel exhaled again. Ready for the potion. He reached for the bottle of extract, uncorked it, threw back his head and swallowed the contents. The taste was so bitter, it scalded. 

He remained kneeling until the potion unwound inside him. A chill crept from his esophagus, engulfed his chest, trickled up through his neck and jaw. When it hit his eye sockets, his eyes felt submerged in boiling water. Eskel closed his eyes and held on. 

The searing pain subsided. When Eskel opened his eyes again, the world had shifted. His oiled sword lay across his knees. Moonlight flashed across the silver blade as he stood, taking it in hand.

He walked the dirt path between cottages. Aelweir was quiet, but full of furtive movement. Someone had left a saucer of milk by their front door. He glimpsed a flash past the saucer and under the foundation of the cottage. The milk’s surface rippled. 

“Peace, domovoi,” Eskel murmured. “Ain’t here for you.”

Another door opened. Eskel froze. Familiar white strands of arenaria parted around Vaclav as he burst from his cottage. Nowhere to go, though-- he started pacing. In one hand he gripped a bottle that he sometimes punched against his thigh and sometimes lifted to his mouth in jerky movements, restless like something caged. He didn’t notice Eskel, didn’t notice anything, head down as he paced. Until he whirled, cocked his fist, and slammed it into the side of the cottage over and over. The timbers shook. 

Bang, bang, bang. Explosive in the night’s stillness. 

Then it was as if his strength left him. Vaclav’s shoulders went slack. He blinked down at his knuckles. Took a swig from the bottle. “Fuck,” he muttered to no one and spat. 

Katarzina’s silhouette appeared in the lit doorway. She didn’t move-- just stood in the doorway, gazing at her husband. 

Vaclav looked mutely from his hand to her. Took another swig. Bowed his head as if he needed to stare at the place where the cottage met the ground and alternately tightened and relaxed his grip on the bottle neck. 

Katarzina said nothing. A few moments passed like that, both of them silent, their gazes not meeting. After awhile she went back in, leaving the cottage door open behind her.

Vaclav looked down at his hand, used the other to jam the bottle against his thigh. “Fuck,” he said, this time a whisper. 

Then he went into the cottage too, and the door rattled as he shut it behind him. 

Eskel stayed to watch the firelight flicker in their door frame and listen. No sounds that he could hear. Even the neighboring cottages had stilled. 

After awhile, he moved on. 

The people of Aelweir had shuttered their windows and most of the firelight in the windows had winked out. Deep shadows now. The sounds of human life were giving way to the sounds of the land at night, and the back of Eskel’s neck prickled. No protection, these cottages. What did they offer against monsters in the dark? 

A patch of shadows crossed the sky. Bats diving. Not his quarry.

Eskel stopped mid-step. Something had changed.

His medallion. It hummed against his chest. A warning. 

Movement darted to his left, in the moonlight between cottages. He looked and for a split second he saw a miasma of black smoke. A shadow, shapeless, floating mid-air. It swarmed down a path that should have been silver with moonlight, swallowing the light as it passed. 

Eskel hurried after it. Not running; it moved too fast, and if he spooked it, he’d never catch up. The apparition had gone south, toward Lukaz’s place. He’d follow it, try to corner it.

To the south, a man screamed. 

Eskel broke into a sprint—and saw it. A billowing darkness leaned through Lukaz’s window.. A swarm of black dots surrounded it like a nimbus. The ghosts of flies... or fleas.

It hadn’t seen him. 

An opportunity.

Eskel leapt forward. In his right arm he lifted his sword and his left hand formed the sign of Yrden. The burning rune blazed to life on the dirt underfoot, and a circle of answering runes lit a wide ring around him and the creature. The black smoke in Lukaz’s window flickered, incorporeal for another fleeting moment. Then the magic circle ensnared it fully, dragging the wraith from the world of spirit into flesh.

The smell hit him first. Death’s cloying stench, every ghoul’s nest he’d ever seen. The otherworldly light of Yrden glowed against a set of remains so rotted, it could barely be called a corpse. Naked ribs, skeletal arms with a few hanging strips of flesh and a few rotted threads of red wool on the shrunken wrist. Exposed spine. Dull hair floating around the withered skull, as if underwater.

The wraith turned in its place, suspended above the earth. Its nose had caved into a crater of putrefying flesh. A full set of teeth glared through the remnants of cheek and jaw. Insects swarmed in a buzzing cloud around it and the eye sockets turned toward him with their squirming nests of maggots. 

This was no night wraith. Eskel had never seen this creature before, but a memory of one of the books in Kaer Morhen came to him and gave its name.

Pesta. Plague maiden. 

Fuck.

Before it could finish turning toward him, Eskel struck. He brought the blade down in a vicious arc, right shoulder down to where the left leg should be, and silver struck bone. Something wet squelched. He stepped forward with his left leg to reverse the stroke, strike upwards, but the pesta flew aside. Eskel turned to face the wraith and it floated out of range, to the edge of the runic circle.

“Don’t touch him,” Eskel said. He jerked his head sideways at Lukaz’s window.

The human skull tilted. A maggot fell through the jaw and curled wetly on the ground. _What are you?_ Its voice nettled like the buzzing of flies. _You are not human._

“You either,” Eskel said. He took a step closer. The pesta floated to the side.

 _Ahhhh._ Its buzzing voice made his skin itch. _Mutant. Witcher. They hired you to kill me._

“No. You’re already dead. I wanna help you get home.” Eskel kept his guard up and circled to the left. The pesta mirrored him, hovering out of range. “You’ve killed enough.”

With plague. But she’d died in the cold. How?

The Yrden circle would fade soon. He could attack it fast, brutally and without mercy. Folk here didn’t see many witchers, which meant that whoever the pesta had been in life hadn’t, either. It wouldn’t know how to defend itself. The fight would be over quickly.

Except something bound the pesta to this plane. Eskel could slay it here, and the next night, it would just come back. No, he couldn’t kill it yet—not until he knew how to make it stay dead.

 _Enough?_ The insect hum intensified. _How would you know what is **enough?**_

Eskel abruptly changed his pacing, circling to the right instead. Had to keep the creature busy, keep it talking. “All of the men are dead here. The boys, too. Whatever revenge you wanted—you’ve got it. You’ve won.”

 _Revenge?_ The remnants of a gray wool dress brushed the dirt as the pesta descended. _This is not revenge. It is a gift._

The outer ring of runes flickered. Eskel sidestepped and dropped his left hand to renew the sign of Yrden. But the pesta had learned quickly. It flew at him. He changed his sword grip to underhand, the range had closed too quickly to use a standard strike, and slashed at its throat. Or where its throat would have been if the Yrden circle had not failed an instant earlier. The blade swiped through a swirl of black smoke.

Eskel let his body follow the momentum of the failed strike and spun aside. He almost dodged. Black smoke materialized again and the pesta struck with talons of curved bone. The sharp edges slashed through the space where his head had been and dug into his left arm instead, catching on the silver spikes. Eskel swung his left leg behind him, used his new footing to complete the pirouette, blade still flashing outward in an underhand grip. This time, it connected. Silver cut across the creature’s rib cage at heart-level. Bone shards flew in splinters. Something in his mind registered the wound in his shoulder and bicep but he couldn’t dwell on that now. He called up Yrden again and this time the pesta was too occupied by the slash to interrupt him. 

The magic circle blazed to life around them. Eskel spun, continuing and increasing his momentum, the blade poised to whirl in a savage cut across the pesta’s exposed spine. Instead he turned halfway and felt his momentum arrested by claws that scraped across his chest. It pushed him too far out of alignment, upset his equilibrium, brought him rolling to the ground.

The pesta loomed above him. The rank remnants of its skirts parted. Something moved in there—many squirming, clawing things—rats. A gnawing tide of black rats poured toward him. He rolled aside nimbly and called the sign of Igni. Fire exploded from his left hand. The night air filled with chittering shrieks. 

Eskel rose to a half-crouch. The pesta couldn’t have left the circle—

He whirled too late. Behind him, the pesta caught his head between its talons and pulled him against its torso, forcing him to look up into its mangled jaw. The stench of decay suffocated him. The creature bent low, gripping his head and bringing the maggot-ridden eye sockets to within inches of his face. 

“Mira,” Eskel spat. “Dajmira. Wait.” 

The creature paused. _Did my father send you?_

Then the talons dug into his skull, twisted. Trying to snap his neck. 

Eskel grabbed at the creature’s wrists, couldn’t pull the talons off. There was no good angle for a sword blow either. He dropped to one knee and tried to throw the creature off him. All he managed to do was dislodge a few maggots from the creature’s eyesockets and a necklace that had been tucked into its rotting frock. The pendant nearly hit him in the teeth as it swung from the creature’s neck: a wooden coin carved with an image. A flower.

 _Here. A gift for the fathers_ , the inhuman voice said. The skeletal jaws parted and a swarming mass of fleas spilled over him, biting every inch of exposed skin. 

Rot filled his mouth and his lungs. Eskel nearly vomited. He reached up, found the opened lower jaw with his fingers, braced his silver blade, yanked the jaw down.

The blade exploded upward through the underside of the pesta’s jaw and out the top of its skull. Bone shards rained down and an inky noxious fluid spilled down his shoulders. 

It screamed like a hundred flies lodged in his ear. Eskel released his grip on the creature, falling forward to roll onto his shoulder and pull his sword free. Its skull had collapsed into itself. The bone talons lashed out again, blind and weak. Eskel sidestepped in a three-quarter turn, the blade cutting across the air with vicious force. The silver blade struck home on the creature’s spine and cut through. 

The upper half and the lower half of the pesta hit the earth separately. Rats squealed, flies roared, the beast’s serpentine tongue lolled obscenely in the dirt. 

Then the sounds stopped.

Eskel stumbled. He had barely recovered his stance from the final cut but the pesta had disappeared. So had the fleas clinging to his neck and arms. Scorched rat carcasses and bone fragments still littered the ground, but there was no sign of the spine he had just severed or the skull he had just split. It was as if he’d hallucinated the fight.

Movement out the corner of his eye. Eskel turned in time to see a mist of black smoke billowing away in the breeze. There was a distant buzzing sound—like the voice of a swarm of flies, laughing.

Eskel breathed. The pesta was gone, but not permanently. The plague maiden was still bound to this plane. But now he knew who she was… and who could tell him what kept her here. 

He had to… had to...

Eskel wobbled. The adrenaline had begun to fade and pain entered his awareness for the first time: the gashes in his left arm, the claw marks in his scalp. Worse than that, the itch of flea bites all over him, incessant--

Pain lanced through his skull. Massive, burning. Eskel stumbled a few steps, reaching for a bench that he could have sworn was next to him but suddenly it seemed to shrink half a mile away. He fell to his knees, lowered his head, and vomited in the dirt.

No. This wasn’t happening. Eskel tried to get up. His stomach lurched and the ground hit him in the side, punched him right in the cheekbone. Fuck, he was on fire. Fuck, was he in the Trials again?

He was a witcher—immune—impossible—

Voices, sounds. Doors opening or closing. People running. Kaer Morhen. He was in Kaer Morhen and they were coming again to kill all the witchers and all he could do was fucking lie there in his own sick--

Someone shouted close to his ear. The words ‘witcher’ and ‘help’ flickered briefly in his mind. Yes, Vesemir, I’m coming, I’ll help you--

“Ves’mir,” Eskel groaned into the dirt. 

More voices, more words. They were lost in the heat that blazed through him, reached a fever pitch, and swallowed him down.


	4. What a Witcher's Life Is Worth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delirious with fever, Eskel remembers one of Vesemir's most important lessons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note about the timeline: as far as I can tell, the canon timeline is that the Sacking of Kaer Morhen happened a couple decades before Eskel & Geralt became witchers, which means that the Wolf School was still training new witchers until the raid in the first Witcher game. That last raid destroyed the secrets of the Trial of the Grasses, ending the witchers' ability to take new apprentices. I'm honestly still a bit confused by this, but I've done my best to roll with it. Apologies for any timeline-induced headaches.

Sounds: nothing. Smells: nothing. 

Eskel floated in the dark.

“Where--” His throat rasped like rusted blades.

Something damp and miraculously cool pressed against his forehead. “You’re alright,” someone said. “You’re safe now. Rest.” 

A woman’s voice. There had never been a woman’s voice waiting for him in the dark. Eskel reached for it, but he fell down past the floorboards, through the earth, into the unlit places of memory.

***

Dinner is sauerkraut, bland sausage, and brown bread for the third night in a row, but Eskel doesn’t complain. No reason to call even more of Vesemir’s wrath down upon them.

It’s not fair. Aren’t they learning Signs? Shouldn’t they practice things that they’re learning? And if someone else leaves a crate of dimeritium bombs lying around unlabeled, is it really their fault if they practice their signs nearby and accidentally set off all of the bombs in a chain reaction that blocks the mages’ spells for days? 

Eskel and Geralt think this is a sound argument. Everyone else disagrees. The instructors have already taken the others down the valley for the last wilderness training of the season, leaving the two boys to their punishment. Eskel never wants to hear the sound of a blade grinding against a whetstone again. He knows that he will tomorrow, for many more hours.

He likes mealtimes more now, though. It’s quiet with just Vesemir, Geralt, and the grown witchers returning from the Path. 

The table in Kaer Morhen’s kitchen is meant for ten. It’s too huge for the company present tonight: three witchers and two little boys who will one day become witchers. Samo arrived last week and already his cheeks look less gaunt. Koenrad came in two nights ago. He still walks around the keep with his swords on his back, even while working in the herb garden. Last winter, he didn’t take his swords off until mid-January. Eskel wonders what he’s scared of. The last witcher is Vesemir, of course. Their guardian acts differently around the grown-up witchers. Samo and Koenrad talk to him more like equals. Sometimes they even tease him and instead of ordering them to run the Gauntlet, Vesemir just smiles. 

“Samo! Hey, Samo. Samo!” Geralt says. 

The witcher finally looks at the little boy. “Kid, can’t you see I’m telling a story? Don’t interrupt.”

“You need to tell it better. Have you ever seen a gagana?”

“Yeah!” Eskel sits up on the bench. “Have you fought any gaganas? ...gaganae? ...gagan...”

Koenrad frowns. “I don’t like these interruptions. Show some respect.”

“Ah, let ‘em talk,” Samo says, smiling. “They’ve got no one to talk to ‘cept ol’ Papa Vesemir.” Samo is the youngest of the grown witchers. It’s easy to like him.

“This time is _meant_ as a punishment.” Vesemir directs his famous glower at Eskel and Geralt. They dodge eye contact. 

“I’ll say,” Samo says. “Gagana? You’ve got ‘em slogging through Brother Adelbert alphabetically?”

“By family and then genus,” Vesemir grunts. “We’re covering avians and tactics against airborne beasts.”

“Sounds more like the section on extinct species. When was the last time you even heard of a gagana sighting?”

“Just because they’re rare doesn’t mean they’re extinct!”

“Yeah,” Geralt says. “Like the noght… nogtkruh...”

“Nachtkruh...” Eskel almost finds the word.

“Nachtkrapp?” Samo guesses. 

“Yeah! Like the nachtkrapp!” Geralt rears his head in triumph. “Everyone thought _they_ were gone.”

“Whoa-ho. You’re raising a couple of scholars here, old man.” Samo tussles Geralt’s red hair. 

“Or spoiled brats,” Koenrad mutters. 

“All knowledge is useful,” Vesemir says. “There’s still the potential for—”

He stops talking and tilts his head. Eskel and Geralt exchange glances but the grownup witchers don’t look confused. They tilt their heads in the same way, and then they look at each other. 

“Wiesli?” Koenrad says.

“Wiesli,” Vesemir confirms.

“Riding an asthmatic llama, sounds like,” Samo says.

“What?” Geralt says. “What are you talking about?”

“He must have ridden hard,” Vesemir says. “Koenrad, go out and meet him. Make sure he’s alright.”

Eskel leans close to Geralt. “I think they’re using _witcher hearing_ ,” he whispers, and they stare at the grown witchers with awe and a little envy.

“Gonna be a full house this winter,” Samo says. “Anyone else coming?”

“If they are, they didn’t say,” Vesemir says. “And we’ll have some hunting to do, or we’re eating sauerkraut until March.”

“Yuck,” Eskel mutters under his breath. It’s enough to earn a stern look from Vesemir. 

“Hey, Samo,” Geralt says, “how did you all do that? How’d you hear Wiesli all the way outside?”

“Heard hooves coming up the trail. The valley amplifies sound. And he’s swearing. You’ll be able to do it, too, after the…” Samo casts a quick look at Vesemir. “After the rest of your training.” 

“The Trials!” Eskel scoots his legs onto the bench so he can kneel forward. “Vesemir says we’ll be ready by the summer, maybe.”

Vesemir and Samo are sharing a serious grown-up look that Eskel hates. It means that they’re hiding something. 

“They grow up so fast,” Vesemir says. “Sit properly, little mutt. You’re at the dinner table now.”

“They sure do,” Samo says quietly as Eskel shifts to sit with his bottom on the bench. The look on Samo’s face has changed. He’s staring into space and he doesn’t look ready to laugh anymore. 

“We don’t have witcher hearing yet,” Geralt says. “But we know signs! ...kinda.” 

Samo comes back to himself, though his smile isn’t as wide as before. “No, you don’t. I don’t believe you.”

“We do, too!”

“Nope. Lies.”

“I’m _not_ lying!”

“Psh. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Vesemir looks like he’s about to say something. Then the edge of his mouth curves a little and he pretends to look somewhere else.

Geralt and Eskel trip over each other to prove Samo wrong. Geralt tries to use Aard to flick crumbs at Eskel’s face and nearly spills his own plate on the floor. Eskel throws a piece of crust in the air, casts Quen, and catches it on top of the shield’s dome that floats inches above his head. The shield is round, though, so the crust teeters and rolls off. 

“Not bad.” Samo claps his big hand on Eskel’s thin shoulder and Eskel sits up a little straighter. “What are you, nine? I was still trying to make a proper Quen when I was thirteen.” 

“He learns fast,” Vesemir says, dropping the pretense that he hasn’t been paying attention. “They both do. Imagine the witchers they’ll make!” He’s about to say more but he turns toward the long hearth and, behind it, the keep’s great front door. “Hm. Finally.”

Samo stands because he is a grown-up witcher and he can hear what Eskel and Geralt can’t. The front doors open and Wiesli barrels through. He is stumbling, like many of the grownup witchers when they first come back and their legs are stiff from riding long miles. But even without enhanced senses, Eskel can tell that he’s drunk. Koenrad follows behind, at Wiesli’s side, as if ready to catch or restrain him—hard to tell which.

“Hi, everyone.” Wiesli wobbles into the kitchen. He’s waving a half-empty bottle of dark red liquid and his many tattoos shine dark in the firelight. “Home sweet home.” 

“Hey, brother,” Samo says. “You’re a sight.”

“Wiesli.” Vesemir stands up. “Were you drinking and riding? All the way north?”

“Why not. I’ve had Prince for three years now. He remembers the way to Kaer Morhen. Barely needed to touch the reins.” The witcher’s bleary eyes drop to Eskel and Geralt. His feline pupils should narrow against the bright firelight, like everyone else’s, but his stay wide. “Oh, look. Kids. You’re still alive?”

Geralt and Eskel shrink back against the table. “Yes,” Geralt says tentatively.

Wiesli shrugs. “Give it a few years.” 

“Leave ‘em alone,” Samo says. 

“I’ll get you some water.” Koenrad goes for an empty mug.

“Water. Pshh. Vodka is witcher’s water, right?” Wiesli walks to the fireplace and stares into it. “How’s everybody? Raking in the gold?”

“Yeah,” Samo says. “I’ve decided to go into real estate.”

“Really?” Wiesli’s smile is lopsided but genuine. 

“No. The fuck is wrong with you, Wiesli?” Samo’s tone gentles. “You’re supposed to wait for us to start drinking.” 

“Drinkin’ to fallen comrades. Couldn’t wait.” Wiesli pushes Koenrad away, along with the mug of water he’s offering. “Anyone hear about Reko?”

“No.” Vesemir is standing very still. “You have news?”

Wiesli doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he unties a small drawstring purse from his belt and tosses it on the table. Vesemir looks at him, looks at the pouch, opens it and slowly removes what’s inside: a wolf’s head medallion. 

There is a terrible silence.

“Reko’s dead,” Wiesli says. “I found him. Like they wanted me to. They strung him up like a goddamned Yule decoration…”

“Wiesli,” Samo warns. He inclines his head toward Eskel and Geralt.

“What?” Wiesli whirls on Samo. “We’re all witchers here. Can’t have a little fucking honesty among comrades?”

“C’mon,” Koenrad says, lowering the mug he’s retrieved and setting it on the table. “Think you gotta blow off some steam. Let’s take a walk.”

“And leave the bottle,” Vesemir says.

Wiesli stands there with his shoulders slack and his gaze unfocused. Maybe he’ll listen.

“I wanna tell you about Reko. He took a contract,” Wiesli says to the fire. No, he’s not listening. His throat sounds full of rocks. “Out in Lyria. Folk were turning up dead in the woods. No monster—turned out to be elven refugees, in hiding from the pogrom. Kept to themselves but killed anybody who stumbled across their camp. To keep it secret.”

“Wiesli...”

“I gotta tell you this. I gotta. Reko found the elves. Refused to bust up the camp, even gave ‘em the contract money to help ‘em out. The good folk of Lyria weren’t thrilled.” 

Koenrad and Vesemir are looking at each other. Vesemir shakes his head slightly, and Koenrad looks away.

Wiesli doesn’t notice. He’s not looking at any of them. “Reko rode on but he didn’t ride far enough. They found his camp, attacked him in his sleep. Killed him. Carved his ears into points and hung his corpse from the tallest tree to show what happens to elf-lovers, even if they’re witchers...”

“Sons of bitches,” Koenrad snarls. Samo lowers his head. The only change in Vesemir happens in his eyes. 

Wiesli whirls suddenly on Geralt and Eskel. Eskel curls his legs up on the bench. “You kids wanna be big bad monster slayers?” His smile is sick. “Ha. Out there, we’re just freaks. Know what a witcher’s life is really worth?”

“That’s enough.” Vesemir’s tone is final.

“No. It’s not.” Wiesli’s movements are slow as he squares off with Vesemir. They’re standing nearly chest to chest. “What’ve you told them about the outside, old man? How about Reko? What did you tell him?”

“He knew the risks of the Path.” Vesemir’s stance is steady, his voice calm. “The same risks we all take.”

Wiesli scoffs. “Like we had any damned choice. In any of this.” He nods at Geralt and Eskel. “You’re gonna kill those kids. You know that.” Those blown-wide eyes find Eskel’s. He can’t look away. “Your Trial’s comin’, kid. The Grasses melt your organs, you know that? You’ll die screaming for your mother. Like Arron.”

Eskel’s frozen. He can’t move or talk. Maybe he’s not supposed to because Samo has suddenly closed the distance with Wiesli. “Hey--”

Wieseli jerks his arm, his whole body a violent shudder. “Don’t touch me.”

“Alright.” Samo holds his hands up, palms out. “I was gonna say-- you just got back. Let’s have a drink, play some cards, eat. Right? You wanna eat something?” 

“Shut up,” Wiesli snarls. “Ploughing coward. All of you. Just tell the kids it’s better they die now.” He prods a knuckle into Vesemir’s chest. “Fraid to tell ‘em the truth, old man?”

Vesemir’s eyes narrow. Eskel has never seen this look in his eyes. He can’t breathe and look at it.

“Wiesli.” Koenrad says his name like a warning. He grips Wiesli’s arm.

“I said don’t _fucking_ touch--”

Wiesli explodes into motion, and suddenly everyone’s a blur. Eskel feels hands on his shoulders. It’s Geralt, pulling him up and onto the table, out of harm’s way. Platters ring together as Eskel struggles up. He’s seen the witchers practice, but this isn’t practice. They’re brutal and inhumanly fast. Bodies twist and strike with force that makes the wooden planks tremble. 

Then Wiesli is standing over him, leaning over the bench. His cat eyes flash in the firelight. 

“Pitchforks,” Wiesli hisses, “that’s what--” His arm moves and Eskel forgets to think, he acts. The sign of Quen summons itself from his hand and Eskel lunges forward. The shield becomes his battering ram and it slams into Wiesli’s forehead, sending him reeling backward onto the floor. 

The witchers stop moving. Eskel’s blood roars in his ears. It doesn’t seem possible that the witchers are standing so still, now, moments after they had all been blurs. But there they stand, three of them staring down at Wiesli. Samo wipes something dark red off his face. Liquor. 

Wiesli is lying on the floor with his arms outspread. “Ow. That hurt.”

“Kid’s good with signs,” Samo says. He flashes a smile at Eskel. “And you’re drunk.”

Koenrad drops to a crouch and offers Wiesli his hand. “Think it’s time you had some water.” 

“Yeah. Okay.” Wiesli takes his hand and lets his fellow witcher pull him to his feet. He doesn’t look at any of them as Koenrad leads him out of the kitchen. 

Vesemir jerks his head at the spillage on the floor. The kitchen stinks of herbal liquor. Samo nods and heads for the door, muttering about rags and soap. Only then, when everyone else has left, does Vesemir look for Geralt and Eskel. Eskel is still sitting on the table, his feet on the bench and his bottom in the sausage platter. He can feel Geralt hovering behind him. Both of them are breathing hard. Vesemir is not.

The master witcher grunts as he steps up on the bench. He slides the sausage platter out from under Eskel’s bottom before settling himself on the table next to him. Vesemir opens his arms, and wordlessly the two little boys fall into them. This is a rare privilege, the offering of comfort. He is warm, his embrace steadying. 

“That wasn’t for you to see,” Vesemir says. They can feel his voice vibrating in his chest. He gently pulls on their shoulders to create a little space between them, enough to see their eyes. “You did well, little mutt. Clever use of Quen. Aard would have given you better range, though.”

Eskel nods, tries to smile. He wants to reply but he can’t think of any words. 

“Is…” Geralt swallows. “Is Wiesli okay?”

Vesemir regards them both. This is the look he gives the grown-up witchers when they talk about their contracts. It’s for fellow professionals, for equals. “He’s in pain. He lost a good friend. Grief needs time to heal, just like when you sprained your ankle on the Platform and you couldn’t train for two weeks. And now he needs our help. Just like you did.”

“Is it true?” Eskel says. He’s worked hard to find the words, so they come out too loud. “What he said… do people kill witchers?”

Vesemir focuses his viper eyes on Eskel alone. Eskel wants to shrink away but he forces himself not to cower, to look back. “You’ve seen the skeletons in the moat, little mutt. The skulls. Do you remember who they belong to?”

“Yes,” he mumbles. “The people who tried to kill us.”

“What did you say?”

“The people who tried to kill us,” Eskel cries. 

The sharpness in Vesemir’s eyes gentles, his iron voice softens. “Yes. Scared folk see monsters everywhere. Given half a chance, they’ll make monsters of us, too. That’s why you stick to your contract, always. A contract means protection. It makes you useful, a hired professional. If you get personally involved-- if you forget your contract-- you risk that protection for all of us.”

Eskel doesn’t have a witcher’s hearing yet. He can’t tell what’s happening to Vesemir’s heartbeat or the breath in his chest. But he can see the master witcher’s eyes and realizes now that they hold centuries of stories, the names of boys who never became men or witchers, the names of witchers who never came home.

So many questions erupt in Eskel’s mind. They crowd him with words: people and fear, monsters and people who slay monster slayers. And the Trials-- he wants to ask about those, too. But not tonight.

Eskel reaches up to his own shoulder, finds Vesemir’s hand, flattens his own palm against it. He doesn’t know what else to do. Vesemir’s ancient eyes find him and for a moment he feels very small and foolish. Then Vesemir’s expression changes into something Eskel doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand any of this, except that he has not made a mistake. 

Vesemir’s calloused hand flexes beneath his own, the other arm tightening around Geralt’s shoulders. He draws them in, stares at each in turn.

“Never get involved.” Vesemir intones it like a spell that can save them. There are so many names in his eyes. “Repeat.”

“Never get involved,” Eskel repeats, reverent.

But Geralt fidgets, frowns. “I thought we saved people from monsters.”

“We do,” Vesemir says. “When they pay us.”

“Only when we get money? Then why do we help at all?”

Vesemir sighs. Eskel sees the lines around his eyes, the wrinkles of his forehead, the silver in his hair. “Because no one else will.”

Wiesli did not stay in Kaer Morhen that winter. He stayed for another week and then rode out early one frosty morning, though snow had begun to fall and it was not yet dawn. At the time, Eskel had been glad for one less belly to fill. 

Wiesli did not come back to Kaer Morhen next winter, or any other. It was only years later that Eskel could guess what happened to him. One night in a tavern run by non-humans, local folk loosened by a few drunk hands of Gwent regaled Eskel with the tales they’d heard of witchers. Most were the usual yarns involving sexual escapades, impossible feats against nonexistent creatures, or wise morals for children… except for the tale of Wesley, also known as the Painted Witcher for the tattoos that covered his body. In the story it was star-crossed love that supposedly broke Wesley’s heart and led him to charge a fiend’s lair alone and unarmed. The ending waxed romantic about the reunion of the witcher and his beloved in the Fields Beyond, to love and be loved in eternity.

Eskel knew the only true ending: somewhere, a witcher died without anyone to bring his medallion home.

***

“Ves’mir… Papa…”

“Shh. Sleep, Eskel.”

Eskel slept.


	5. Making Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plague maiden's origins are revealed. Eskel makes a plan to break the curse, but things go awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're spoiler-sensitive but not content-sensitive, avoid reading the new tags that I added for this chapter. If you are content-sensitive, though, be sure to check 'em out before proceeding. This chapter gets rough.

The haze over Eskel’s mind was slow to part. He floated for a long time before opening his eyes--

\--to immediately close them. Fuck, too bright in here.

Where was ‘here?’ 

Domestic smells: seasoned wood, cloth, cooking fire, soap. The familiar herbal-floral notes of celandine. Underneath him, a bed. He was inside. He couldn’t remember going inside. 

Eskel opened his eyes again, this time in slits. The inside of a cottage, warm, clean, windows open to morning sun. He braced himself and shifted his legs, found them intact, tried his arms, winced. Significant wound in his left shoulder, not fatal. He lifted his head, tried to get a glimpse. Linen bandages had been wrapped around his shoulder and arm by a competent hand. Blood leaked through, but the color was dark, already drying. 

“Well, look at you, Sir Rise and Shine!”

Eskel fought to focus on the sound. An older woman leaned in the doorway, fists on her hips, smiling down at him. Something in her face registered as familiar, but he couldn’t remember why. 

“Where am I?” His throat felt scraped, like a barber had shaved the inside of his throat. The lingering acid taste of puke didn’t make him feel any better.

“Still in this vale of tears, despite your best efforts.” The woman stepped into the room. “You’ve got a lot of offerin’s to make, young man. When they found you, you didn’t know your own name.”

“They found me…?”

“Aye, after a great ruckus outside. Thrashin’ about and decoratin’ the road with your guts, you were. My granddaughter insisted we bring you in here. You were up ravin’ most of the night.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Any of that sound familiar?”

Eskel pressed his palm to his forehead. What did he remember? The contract. Trudging back and forth across the village in the damned noon sun. A woman in the rye fields who tapped her fingers on her scythe. Evva. That’s why this woman was familiar-- she was Evva’s grandmother.

It came back to him: moonlight on rotted flesh, the ghouls-nest stench. The pesta.

“Nngh.” Eskel sat up, had to stop when a wave of dizziness hit. 

“Easy now. You hold right there. Don’t go splatterin’ my floor again.” The old woman hurried out the doorway, returning a moment later with a pitcher and a mug. The water was lukewarm but clean, and it helped wash the foul taste from his mouth.

Eskel downed two full glasses before he looked up again. Evva’s grandmother watched him, head tilted at an angle, her lower jaw shifting left and right. “So what did it?” At his questioning look, she jutted her chin at the bandages on his shoulder. “That little number on you.” 

A monster who wasn’t always a monster. A ghost. A girl.

_Did my father send you?_ the pesta had asked. In a village with so few men left and no money for multiple contracts, he knew who she meant. 

“Something I need to take care of,” Eskel said. Everything ached, not the muscle-ache that came after a hard fight or a run on the Gauntlet, but a weakness in his marrow. He felt emptied. The last time he’d been sick was before the Trials. Hadn’t missed it. “Thanks for patchin’ me up. I need to talk to your granddaughter. She around?”

The woman’s forehead wrinkled. “Can’t it wait ‘til you get a little food in you?”

“It’s important.”

Her mouth tightened. “She’s outside. I’ll call her in, but first...” She crossed to a side table where his equipment had been piled, pulled out his gray shirt, and threw it at him. “Make yourself decent, young man.”

Eskel obediently pulled his shirt on, wincing as the wounded muscles stretched. Evva’s grandmother made a ‘hm’ sound and retreated from the doorway. 

Her footsteps left the cottage. A few minutes later, Evva entered the room. “Eskel!” Her smile lit the room. “You look… good!”

“Huh. Compared to what? A corpse?”

Evva pulled over a chair that had been placed against the wall and sat down. “That _is_ what usually happens to folk who catch the plague, so, yes. Like you looked last night. Gods, I thought you wouldn’t see morning. How are you awake? How are you looking at me now?”

“Mmrgh. With my eyes.” 

“Ha _ha_. No, honestly. You should be dead.”

“Witcher’s blood. Usually we don’t get sick at all.” Either Eskel was getting old, or the pesta was as powerful as he’d worried. He turned his head to block her view of his scars and grinned. “Seems I gotta thank you for a rescue, too. You wanna just take the reward now?”

“You’re keeping every crown of that contract.” Evva tapped a finger on his shoulder, a playful gesture. She was so natural about it, but Eskel couldn’t remember the last time a sober person had casually touched him outside of Kaer Morhen. “I worked my…” She turned to glance behind her at the doorway, lowered her voice to a mischievous whisper. “I worked my _arse_ off on commissions for that coin. You’d better believe it’s all going to you.” 

“Commissions? What kinda commissions?”

“I know a bit of carpentry and woodworking. My father taught me. I still use his tools. Comes in handy when we need extra coin-- I don’t think witchers offer discounts.”

“Depends how hungry we get,” Eskel said. He didn’t mention that seventy crowns for this contract _was_ a discount. 

“Mm!”

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Evva was letting him take it easy, and Eskel?-- Eskel knew the peaceful quiet was a lie, and he’d be the one to break it. Had to.

He inhaled celandine and woodsmoke, red cedar and lavender, held the atmosphere of domestic tranquility in his lungs. Tasted what quiet must feel like, a daily routine, a bed that’s yours. 

Then he got to work. All he had to do was sit in the bed and look. 

Evva’s clothes were still plain except for the same simple decorative touches he’d seen in the rye field. He took a closer look at the bracelet around her right wrist: intertwined braids of red and blue yarn woven into spirals. He hadn’t noticed the intricacy of the pattern before. Like the knotwork that decorated the ships and buildings in Skellige. Around her neck, a wooden coin hung from a simple leather cord. There was something carved into the surface.

“Hey.”

Evva looked up.

“What is that?” he asked.

“What’s what?” Evva followed Eskel’s gaze and lifted her wooden pendant to eye level. “This?”

“Yeah. What’s that carvin’?”

Evva leaned forward, holding up the wooden coin for him to see. Skillful woodwork. A flower had been carved into the wood, five round petals blooming from a small circular center. 

The same as the pendant around the pesta’s neck.

“Sandwort arenaria?” Eskel said casually. Evva nodded with a grin of pleasure at his recognition. She could have dropped a coin down the pit that had opened quietly in his stomach. “Woodworking, huh. So you made this.”

“Yes. Wooden jewelry isn’t exactly high fashion, but.” Evva shrugged. “It’s what we can afford out here.”

Best friend, she’d said. _So I guess this whole damned village feels cursed._

Evva leaned toward him. She’d noticed him pulling into himself. “What?” she asked, a tilt of a smile into the word. 

The quiet of the moment rested, fragile, in his hands. One more second and he’d press down and shatter it. This woman who had worked her arse off to fund his contract, who’d seen him bleeding and feverish and worked to save him-- he was about to hurt her. 

“Evva.” Eskel looked for her eyes. “I need to tell you somethin’.” 

Evva caught the new note in his voice, and her eyes darkened. “Alright...” 

When the witchers gathered in Kaer Morhen, they never talked about this part. The part where they had to pretend that all of the stories were true and emotion was foreign to them.

“That necklace,” Eskel said. “Seen another just like it.” 

Emotion played across Evva’s face, rippling from confusion to curiosity to the faint stirrings of a guess she didn’t want to make. “Really? Where?” 

Eskel tapped his shoulder, over the dark red rust stain in his shirt and the bandages underneath. “On the thing that gave me this.”

Evva’s face had gone blank, her voice flat. “What.”

He made sure that he held her gaze. He needed to watch for the moment she understood completely. “The creature hauntin’ this village, killin’ your men, your boys-- it’s a pesta. A plague maiden. A kinda wraith, usually someone who died of sickness and couldn’t pass on. She’s wearin’ a necklace you made.”

Evva didn’t move at all. 

Then it was as if he’d hit her in the stomach. She curled up, pressing her hands to her chest. Her heart stampeded beneath her palms to give her all of the strength she needed to flee, get away from whatever terrible thing was trying to kill her. But he’d damned her to knowledge, and she couldn’t. 

“She took it,” Evva sobbed. “I can’t believe… they wouldn’t let me see her. I had to bury it... at her _grave_...”

Eskel said nothing. What could he say?

Evva covered her face with her palms to muffle a sobbing scream. 

The door of the room opened. Evva’s grandmother hovered in the doorway. She would have rushed in, but Eskel met her eyes and the old woman froze. She looked at her granddaughter, sobbing with her face in her hands, then at the witcher, sitting bloodied and upright in sheets still damp from last night’s fever sweats.

Evva’s grandmother tightened her lips, gave Eskel a barely perceptible nod, and backed away from the room, sliding the door closed behind her. Evva never noticed that she’d entered. 

Evva shuddered until her lap was soaked, until her voice coarsened. Eventually she fell quiet and sat unmoving with her face in her hands for many moments after that. When she finally lifted her head, her eyes were dull with pain.

“That must be Mira,” Evva whispered. “Somehow.”

“She’s Vaclav and Katarzina’s daughter, isn’t she?”

Evva nodded. 

“She must’ve meant a lot to you.”

Evva nodded again without looking away from her hands in her lap. 

They never talked about this part, the other witchers. Every time he went through it, Eskel remembered why.

“The arenaria…” Eskel cleared his throat. “Told Katarzina she oughta sell those flowers around her house. The cloth ones. She told me a story ‘bout arenaria. Somethin’ ‘bout an elf and a buncha trials, ninety-two of ‘em.”

“Ninety-six,” Evva whispered. 

“Ah. You know the story.” Eskel paused. “Me, figured it was ‘bout a guy who didn’t know how to quit. She said most folk see it differently. That it’s ‘bout love that never dies.” 

Evva’s breath caught, and she shuddered. 

“It was her way of saying what we couldn’t say aloud,” she said, every word torn from an aching, tender place inside her. “You’ve seen this village. How everyone talks. It’s… dangerous to be different here. She loved that story. Enovin’s trials. So she wove those flowers and hung them from her cottage. Nobody else knew what they meant. But every time I passed her cottage, it was like her saying it to me.”

“Were a lot of ‘em,” Eskel said gently.

Evva’s face rippled with more emotions than it could sustain. “Yes.”

She fell silent. He could see her in a battle that he couldn’t help, not with potions or swords. 

“But something happened,” Eskel said.

“Something happened.” Evva forced herself to take a deep shaking breath. “Madergidd was coming. It would have been Mira’s first time… presented. I’m lucky. No mother-- no being presented.” A bitter quirk of her lips. “I couldn’t see her go through that. So we saved money to get out. Planned to go to Vergen. Anywhere we could say what we wanted aloud, all the time. But then Vaclav found out.” 

“Did he hurt you?”

“Me, no. Mira...” Evva closed her eyes and lowered her head. “The whole village could hear him beating her. The next morning, Rasz-- he’s her little brother-- he came to my door. He told me, if Vaclav ever saw me looking in Mira’s direction again, he’d… well, he made a threat. A nasty one.”

Eskel nodded to show that was enough. “That’s when he locked her up.”

“Yes. Said that if she was going to break the natural order like a rabid beast, she could sleep like one. Locked her up in the granary, day and night. Gave her food once a day. The other men helped him-- they made sure I couldn’t see her. They kept her mother away, too. Everyone but Vaclav.”

“This the same granary that burned down?”

Evva paused. “Yes. That was later.” She paused again. “A few days after she…” 

“After she died.”

New tears sprang to Evva’s eyes. She could only nod.

Understanding hit Eskel with the force of an Aard blast. There was a pattern to this clusterfuck contract after all-- Vaclav’s drunkenness. His unwillingness to hire a witcher, even after the townsfolk went to so much trouble for the contract money. The men dying, the women spared. The timing of Federbludd Main and Vaclav the sole man left untouched. A buzzing of insects swarming together to form the words: _a gift for the fathers._

“Eskel?” He came back to himself. Evva was staring at him, eyes wet, but focused.

“I get it now,” he said. “How Mira became a pesta.”

Evva winced at the words. “I don’t.” 

“Think of this way. Granaries in winter: they’re warm, quiet, undisturbed, plenty a food. What happens?”

Evva frowned. “Animals come in?”

“Animals,” Eskel said with a nod. “Birds, foxes… and maybe rats.”

She stared at him. She didn’t understand or she didn’t want to. 

“Evva-- Mira didn’t die of cold.”

“What.” The word came to her lips automatically. “No. That-- but no one else got the plague. Not then. Not ‘til months later.”

Eskel nodded. “Pretty smart, gettin’ rid of plague rats when you find ‘em. By, say, burnin’ ‘em.” 

Evva sat in her chair but he saw her standing at a precipice. “Burning them. Burning the granary. Because that would hide…”

“Evidence,” Eskel finished. “That someone had put you all at risk. Someone responsible for keepin’ the village safe.”

Eskel could see it on the tip of her tongue. She had all of the pieces. The work was putting them together and having the stomach for the whole hideous picture. 

“Vaclav.” Evva looked to him for confirmation. 

“Musta known she was sick,” Eskel confirmed. “Let ‘er die, hid the cause after.”

First it was a look of uncomprehending shock, and then, in the sharpening of her eyes, clarity. “No,” she whispered. “Everyone dying-- the way they _scream_ at night… because...” 

“I’m sorry,” Eskel said. 

“How could he. How could she-- Mira’s not a monster. He can’t make her a monster!” 

If he could have, Eskel would have told her what he knew about monsters—who they were and who made them. About the merchant in Tridam who’d paid him to slay a rusalka that was drowning village folk, and about the child who’d known that the rusalka was the merchant’s own wife, beaten to death and sunk to hide the results of jealous rage. He’d tell her about the dwarven woodcutters he’d found impaled by a leshen’s roots, and the human woodcutters who had one week earlier given the dwarves the use rights for that land “as a token of reconciliation and professional solidarity.” He’d tell her about the villagers who’d hired a witcher to kill the survivors of genocide and then hanged him for his mercy. Yeah, Evva, there’s a pesta in the village. But she isn’t the monster, and plague isn’t the disease. 

Evva crumbled, bowed into her lap. Tears pattered on the floorboards between their feet. Someone else should have helped her carry this, someone who’d seen it all happen. He was a stranger. But Eskel laid a hand on her shoulder and when she leaned toward him he held her, very gently, because no one else would. 

This wouldn’t be in the story that he’d tell Geralt and Lambert, if he told this story at all.

Evva’s breathing came slow and steady. Its timbre changed. “Let her do it.”

“What?” 

She pulled herself away from his arms. Now her eyes blazed through the tears. “Mira. She didn’t deserve this. Vaclav let her die! Because of…” Tears spilled down her cheeks but she choked out the words anyway. “Because she loved me.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know that. It’s his. And he can’t get away with it.” Evva gripped his arm. “Eskel. Don’t finish the contract.” 

“You want me to let her kill ‘im?”

Evva nodded once, fiercely. 

Eskel removed her hand from his arm. “Can’t do that.”

“But all of this is his fault. Everything that happened to Mira and to everyone else, too. You can’t tell me he doesn’t deserve it.”

“Maybe. But that pesta?” Eskel tapped the bandages on his shoulder. “One who gave me this? That ain’t Mira anymore. Once she’s done in Aelweir, ain’t nothin’ to stop her from movin’ to the next village. You want hundreds more to die, thousands, ‘cause of him? They deserve it, too?”

Evva swallowed. “Well, what are you going to do? Kill her? Again?” 

“No. Won’t take, anyway. Plague maidens-- they’re created by a kind of curse. You lift the curse, you release her.” Eskel swung his feet to the floor. Too much of his body ached, from the wound in his shoulder to the lingering sense of weakness in his bones. “Ungh. I gotta get to work. ”

“I want to help you.”

“After all that puke you cleaned up?” Half a smile, to keep the skin from pulling at his scars. “Tryin’ to get hired as an assistant?”

Evva made a sound that resembled a chuckle but was more a release of tension. “What can I say? Maybe I’ve found my calling.” 

“Thanks for the offer. But Vaclav’s the only one who can lift this. He left her out there to die by herself-- now, he’s gotta accept her back into the family.” 

Evva stiffened. “Accept her back? Eskel. This is Vaclav. He’d die first.”

“If he doesn’t lift the curse, he will. Everybody else, too.” 

Evva’s heart rate jumped. It sounded to him as if it filled the room. “Gods,” she whispered. “I don’t know how you’ll get him to do it.” Her lip curled. “That man’s a monster.” 

Eskel gripped the edge of the bed and looked away. “I dunno, either.”

They both looked up. A clamor came from outside the cottage, voices spiralling together in a chaos of sound. Eskel strained to hear. The voices sounded close to the cottage: _Vaclav’s looking for the witcher. Is he in there? How should I bleedin’ know where to find ‘im, do I look like ‘is wife? Have witchers got wives? If you’re so curious, why don’t you go and ask ‘im, Niola…_

Eskel stood up. The wobble in his legs took him by surprise. He could stand and walk fine, but damn, not much more than that. He’d have to brew some Swallow, but this situation with Vaclav sounded urgent. Business first. “Sounds like they’re callin’ for me.”

Evva rose from her chair, too. “Are you going to be alright?”

“Alright enough.” Evva or her grandmother had piled his equipment onto a table nearby. The thought of wearing all that leather and metal made him want to collapse back into the bed. Might as well leave it. The pesta wouldn’t be a problem ‘til sundown-- he’d have time to get into fighting shape again. “I’ll be back.”

Eskel’s legs proved more obedient the more he walked. By the time he’d pulled on his boots and emerged into the morning sun, he could walk like a normal person and not a geriatric whose leg had just fallen asleep. Was that why the townsfolk eyed him with such suspicion? Was he doing a poor impression of a man who’d had his shoulder torn open and then survived a plague that had killed everyone else? 

The cluster of townsfolk fell silent at the sight of him. Elsewhere, voices on the breeze kept going. They were too far to discern the words, but it wasn’t the light, easy tone of gossip. There was a tension in the voices, a frenetic energy. 

He nodded at the cluster of folk outside Evva’s cottage. All women, like every other villager healthy enough to go outside. “‘mornin,” Eskel said. 

Two of them lowered their eyes, one stared back without a word, and the fourth gave him a distant nod. “Master Witcher,” she said. Some polite tones boded worse than threats. “Our aldorman’s askin’ after ya.”

“Great. Nice to be missed. He at his house?”

“No. The offerin’ tree.” The woman pointed down the path. “Straight this way. See that great big oak-- that’s where yer headed.”

“‘preciate the help,” Eskel said. 

The woman gave him a single deliberate nod. 

As he turned down the path, he could hear the footsteps of the women following at what they probably figured was a discreet distance. Something wasn’t right. Their low voices didn’t give any clues, though.

The offering tree lived up to its name. The oak must have been hundreds of years old, a thick-trunked grandfather of the forest with a cushion of moss on its lower branches. Piles of offerings ringed its roots. It looked like any of the roadshine shrines that Eskel passed, but much bigger, with all the village’s offerings gathered into a sprawling hoard. He didn’t spare much attention for the offerings, though. All of his attention fell on Vaclav, who stood waiting for him with his fists on his hips, upper body leaning forward at the waist.

“What’ve ya done, witcher?” Vaclav jerked his arm at the offerings. His right hand was wrapped in a layer of cloth bandages. 

Eskel looked at the offerings. That sound. That smell. He saw now that the piles of food swarmed with flies. A basket of gooseberries crawled with white fleshy larvae. Even a clutch of mushrooms had blackened and collapsed into decay. 

The plague maiden. He knew she wasn’t dead. Looked as if all he’d done was piss her off.

“I know what this is.” Eskel focused on Vaclav. “Listen, Vaclav, I gotta talk to you. In private.”

“Aye. For certain, ya do.” Vaclav lifted his arms, too much force in the motion. The man smelled like cheap booze again. Not a good combination. “Tell us why our offerins’ gone rotten. Why there’re termites in the offerin’ tree. Why our sacred rites’re defiled!” 

The man was too damned loud. Folk were gathering to watch-- Eskel could hear their heartbeats hammering, their breath held too long, murmuring to each other and themselves.

_...unnatural, sorcery…_  
_...bet ‘e’s found that witch, aye, come to butcher us…_  
_...bring demonspawn into the village, ye’ll gather what ye’ve seeded…_

“I’ll explain.” Eskel raised his hands, palms out. He bowed his head toward an empty stretch of field beyond the ancient oak. “Come walk with me. It’s-- a lil’ sensitive.”

Vaclav’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t turn toward the field-- instead, he stepped into Eskel’s space. Eskel stood firm. The man wanted to play a game of who’s alpha? Fine. Whatever made the conversation happen. They stared at each other less than two feet apart. Eskel breathed booze-sweat stink.

“Vaclav.” Katarzina’s voice came from somewhere behind Vaclav. “Please!”

“Shut _up_ , woman.” Vaclav’s voice fell to a growl. “Now listen good, freak. Ya work for me. When I ask a question, ya open yer ugly mouth and answer.” 

Bait. Eskel didn’t take it. He willed calm into his chest, his hands. “Tried to make this easier.” He shrugged, raised his voice so the townsfolk could hear. “Your monster-- it’s a plague maiden.”

_Plague maiden? The ‘ell is that?_  
_Pesta, ye daft-- a bleedin’ pesta, gods above--_  
_Sweet Melitele mother of all pray for us_  
_Daft nags, there’s no such thing_

Vaclav’s lip curled into a sneer. “If ya found a beast, go hunt it down. What’re we payin’ ya for?”

“Hunted it down last night. You might’ve heard.” A particularly strong whiff of Vaclav’s booze-breath hit him in the nostrils. Eskel twitched his nose. “This thing ain’t a rabid dog. Can’t just hit it ‘til it dies. You gotta break its curse-- and I need your help to do it.”

Vaclav’s sneer deepened. “What, useless fuckin’ mutant? Can’t do it yerself?”

_\--aye for seventy ploughin’ gold ye’d think--_  
_curse so it’s a witch what did I tell ye_

Do not take the bait do not take the bait do not take-- “No, ‘cause I didn’t create it.” Eskel’s voice hardened. “You did.”

_\--what--_  
_\--how--_  
_\--lyin’--_

More murmurs, more breath, more heartbeats lifting or skipping. There were too many people here, damn it. They made Vaclav posture, not listen.

Vaclav lowered his forehead. He wasn’t quite as tall as Eskel. It was like he was preparing to headbutt him in the nose. “What the hell are ya sayin’?”

No way out of saying it publicly. What a godsdamned mess. “Your daughter, Mira. You told everyone she died of cold. That still your story, Vaclav?”

_Oh no he said her name--_  
_What’s he pokin’ in old business for--_  
_Makin’ up nonsense--_

Now Vaclav understood. Eskel broke eye contact, stepped aside, took a few paces free of the stench of booze. People _had_ gathered, nearly everyone in the village healthy enough to venture outdoors. Most stood in clusters but Katarzina stood alone, a pleading look on her face. A plea he couldn’t answer. On the other side of the offering tree, Evva and her grandmother joined the crowd of onlookers. The folk around them stepped aside to give them a wide berth.

“Nah. Wasn’t cold.” Eskel faced the crowd, his back to Vaclav. Stupid goddamned farce. This should have happened behind closed daughters. A conversation for solving problems, not trumpeting like mummers on a stage. Vaclav, you jackass. “Was the plague. You knew that rats got into the granary. You knew she was sick. But you couldn’t let folk know you put ‘em all at risk, so you burned the granary down. Figured that was the end of it.” Eskel turned around. Vaclav was staring at the ground, opening and closing his fists. “‘Cept it ain’t. Mira’s back-- for you, for every man here. And she won’t stop.”

Utter silence fell. The only sound was a high, strangled choke. Katarzina. She stood with both hands covering her mouth so only her eyes were visible. They were wide, staring, windows to a mind that could not even find enough solid grounding for tears. 

She hadn’t known. Her own husband; her only daughter. 

“Got it all figured out, dontchya,” Vaclav spat. His face was bright red and his eyes had grown dark and flat. “You come where yer not welcome, poke around into private family affairs ya know nothin’ of, and ya stand here mouthin’ off with no understandin’.”

Eskel narrowed his eyes and scowled, knowing that it deepened the scars across his face. The look had frightened reluctant witnesses into memory in the past. “It ain’t private anymore, Vaclav. It’s killed half your folk.”

Vaclav’s face split into a hideous grin. “Think I don’t know that, freak?” Vaclav closed the distance between them. His arms trembled at his sides. “I had to watch her die! My own daughter, fallen into abomination!” 

“She wasn’t an abomination until you _killed_ her.” 

Vaclav lifted his clenched, bandaged fist. It shook mid-air. Eskel didn’t blink. 

“Wrong.” Vaclav let his arm fall. “This village lives or dies on natural law. _She_ violated it.” He spat in the dirt. “I tried to wash us clean but contamination that obscene don’t wash away easy. O’ course we’re still sufferin’ from it. ‘Course her stain lingers. All of us’re guilty of allowin’ such filth to breed in our midst, me most of all. And natural law will punish us for it.”

More murmurs erupted from the crowd, uneasy, some questioning, some supporting, some muttering in anger. All of them ceased as Evva stepped forward.

“Oh, shut your idiot mouth!” she demanded. “It wasn’t natural law that locked her up. It was you! You caused all of this. This _suffering_. This _death_. With what you did to Mira!”

“What _I_ did to _her_.” Vaclav turned his sneer on Evva. “Well, if there en’t a confederacy of freaks at work.”

“It’s true.” Another woman stepped forward, the one from the rye fields. Darva. “I saw ‘em conspirin’ in the fields together yesterday, her and that creature.” 

“Aye.” The voice came from Big Blue Wera. “Why’d you suppose he spent all last night in her cottage?”

A woman Eskel didn’t recognize laughed nastily. “Poor Evva never could find herself a _real_ man.”

A chorus of supportive murmurs grew louder in the crowd and the dissenting voices dropped away, trailing off into inaudible mumbles. The current of the crowd’s opinion had found its direction. 

“You leave off that talk, all of you,” Evva’s grandmother said sharply. Evva tried to retreat back into the crowd, though it had parted around her, leaving her exposed. Her grandmother stood behind her with her chin raised, fiery gaze moving among the other townsfolk. “You know I wouldn’t allow such tomfoolery in my house. The witcher was wounded, she tended to him. That’s the sum of it, ya hysterical busybodies.” 

“And why should we believe you?” another woman demanded. “Ye’ve not controlled her _urges_ before, have you?” 

_Ugh the thought of that creature with_ anyone--  
_\--typical, told ye, like calls to like and both of ‘em freaks--_  
_\--nothin’ but trouble I always said--_

The restless, snarling current of the crowd had grown louder, full of sneers and eyes that crackled at Evva or Eskel in turn. The mood had changed. Now Eskel could feel the eyes of these people, these women, uniting against him as of course they would. He was a mutant, an outsider, Evva was an outcast. Why would they listen?

“I told ya, didn’t I? ‘Bout natural order?” Vaclav wore the ugly grin of a man who knew the crowd was with him. “We don’t need yer freakish ideas. Do what yer paid to do and wipe the stain clean. Or we’ve no use for ya.” 

“Vaclav.” Eskel lowered his voice to something calmer, quieter. “C’mon. I do this for a livin’. You want me to fix this? I’m tellin’ you how to fix it. Take Mira back into the family. No more plague, no more dyin’.”

Katarzina shifted her gaze to Vaclav. There were tears in her eyes. “Vaclav, please,” she said, but too much inside her had broken. It came out a cracked whisper that only a witcher could hear. 

Vaclav barked a laugh. “Did ya hear that?” His voice was loud, not meant for Eskel. “Take an abomination into the family? Violate the hearth? Whose side ya on, freak?”

Voices rose, Darva’s the loudest. “Get it out of here, Vaclav.” Eskel knew that cruel smirk. “We should never’ve taken it in. Wicked devil- it’s probably in league with the demon!” 

“No,” Evva cried, but the growing clamor drowned her out--

_\--get it out of here--_  
_\--dirty creatures--_  
_\--filth--_  
_\--root of our trouble--_  
_\--freaks and abominations--_  
_\--get it out, get it **out** \--_

“Vaclav!” Eskel snarled. He had to break through the frenzy, had to find the tone that was harsh enough, loud enough, sharp enough-- “Think of your boy. Rasz. You can save him.”

Vaclav’s eyes glittered as his head tilted back. “We’ll worry about our own.” Vaclav backed away, raising his voice. “This mutant can’t help us. I revoke the contract. Now get the hell out of Aelweir.”

The crowd burbled. It was like a single living thing, crawling with the frenetic energy that Eskel had sensed when he’d come out of Evva’s cottage without his armor or his swords and felt something wrong, but hadn’t gone back for them. A witcher lived and died by his instincts. He should have trusted them.

“No! You shit heel!” Evva screamed. The crowd’s burbling stopped. She charged forward, face red and feral. “How _could_ you. You killed your own daughter, you maggot-brained clod. You monster. And you don’t care. None of you care!” Evva whirled on the crowd, eyes almost spitting fire. “Our folk’re dying, our fathers, sons, brothers all dead, but you won’t help your own son.” She spat on the ground. “You’re no aldorman. And you’re no father!” 

Drowners gave off different pheromones just before attacking. Maybe Vaclav did, too, because Eskel moved before he knew he was moving. Vaclav took a single step toward Evva and found the witcher in his path. 

“Get out of my way, mutant.” An animal snarl. Vaclav and the townsfolk seethed with a shared wordless instinct. It ran wild now, making lips draw back into snarls, hands tighten into fists, eyes narrow, teeth bare. 

Eskel found the animal current in Vaclav’s eyes, stared it down. “Can’t do that, Vaclav.”

Stillness. Then Vaclav’s shoulder rippled. A right cross aimed for Eskel’s jaw. Eskel pulled in, angled left. Clean tight dodge. The blow fired past him, blowing air across his cheek. Could have gone for a hook to Vaclav’s exposed left flank but Eskel stepped back instead, giving them both distance. He caught Vaclav’s eyes. Livid, beyond fury. Now Eskel saw a man who would let his son and daughter die before he could say he was wrong. 

Vaclav tightened the distance. Eskel took another step back. He needed to see the crowd. He did, and there it was-- the beast that glowered behind each set of eyes. It drew them closer, made them howl in snarls without words. 

Wiesli had been right. Without a contract Eskel was just another freak, a stain to be wiped out.

“Vaclav,” he said.

The beast glared at him through Vaclav’s eyes. 

Eskel saw the next moments to come. Vaclav would attack. He'd be cruel, fast, aiming to shatter bone and snap joints. Eskel would be faster, brutal as what he was-- a mutant designed to kill. The people would see it. They'd press in with the rocks that some had already picked up or the scythes and pitchforks that lay nearby. He'd defend himself. He had no armor, no swords, but he didn't need them anymore than he’d needed them to stop the highway robbers. Quen would lift a shield that shattered knuckles and the brittle iron of pitchforks, Aard would hurl bodies and crush spines, Igni would blacken skin and flesh to ash. When enough of them lay broken and whimpering on the ground, they'd run away from him-- the monster who'd come from outside the village and left nothing but ruin.

Eskel relaxed his stance, lowered his hands. 

“I don’t wanna fight you.” Eskel kept his voice soft. To his own ears, he sounded tired. “I got it. No contract. Right?” He held up his empty palms. “I’ll leave. You got what you wanted.” 

Vaclav didn’t move.

Then pain exploded against the back of Eskel’s skull. He fell forward, reeling. There was a thud on the ground where the rock that someone had hurled at his head bounced and tumbled into the grass. He had time to register the sight. Then came a wave of booze-stink and blunt force smashed into his ribs. Vaclav hit him in the stomach and then aimed for his head, too drunk to hit it, glancing his fist across Eskel’s shoulder instead. The man was lean, carved from a lifetime of field work. Eskel tried to back up but Vaclav was on top of him every shuffling backstep, laying into his head, his chest, his side. 

“Come on, witchman,” Vaclav panted. “That all ya got?”

Against every instinct Eskel left his arms at his sides even as the hits kept coming and the crowd brayed for more, _hit him harder, make him bleed, you show him, Vaclav--_

Show him what? Eskel knew. He was everything different, everything that violated their natural law. Vaclav had to put him in his place. If he submitted, he’d be allowed to live. If he resisted, they’d find pitchforks, stakes, fire, nooses, but even that wouldn’t satisfy the beast. They’d destroy every freak they could find, every woman like Evva, every witcher, elf, dwarf, and sorceress, and like the pesta, they would never stop. 

“Stop! What’s wrong with you?” Evva’s voice glimmered somewhere beyond the pain. “He’s not fighting back! Stop hitting him!”

Her grandmother’s voice, low, knowing: “Stay back, girl. You can’t help him.”

A direct hit to his jaw. For a moment Eskel floated, and then the ground slammed into his back. 

“Psh. Not so tough now, are ya.” Vaclav stood above him as Eskel lay sprawled and groaning. The aldorman made a black shadow against the bright morning sky. “Hideous sight, your mug. Like a demon’s abortion.” The shadow changed, its leg stretching back to deliver a kick to Eskel’s head. “Let’s fix it.”

“Vaclav.” Katarzina’s voice was hoarse and soft, but it cut through the clamor. “He’s learned his lesson. Let him live with it.”

The leaves of the great oak waved overhead in the sunshine. Eskel focused on them in the brief silence.

The sound of panting. “That right? Ya learn your lesson?” Vaclav’s breath grew louder as he crouched at Eskel’s side. Eskel turned his face away. 

“Have ya?” Vaclav poked a finger into Eskel’s chest. His finger found its way to the bloodstain on Eskel’s shirt and dug in. Eskel jerked, bit down on a grunt of pain. 

“Aw yeh. Ya know what ya are now.” Vaclav grinned down at him, his mouth curled in gruesome triumph. “A freak. No place in the natural order for yer like. And what don’t belong-- gets cut out.” 

Vaclav shuddered then. His mouth tightened and his eyes were no longer looking at Eskel. 

In a blink, it passed. Vaclav shoved a knuckle into Eskel’s wound with one final, vicious jab. “I’ll give ya an hour. After that, if I see your wretched mug about, ya’re a dead freak.” 

The leaves of the greak oak. The sunlight.

Footsteps retreated, along with the voices. Some of them paused nearby, emboldened enough to spit curses at him, though none had the courage to stand too close. Eskel let it all fade away. Everything but the aches in his body receded into twilight.

Someone knelt next to him. “Eskel?” 

A gentle hand drifted to his chest. Eskel flinched, sat up quickly so that Katarzina fell back on her heels and took her arm away. He saw that it was her, let his shoulders slacken. Now the tears had come to her eyes. 

“Come,” she said in her broken voice. “I’ll get you a wet cloth.”

“Don’t.” Eskel felt his forehead. His fingertips came away with a smear of blood. “I’m fine.”

Evva’s voice, from the other direction: “But you’re not.”

Evva had stopped mid-step. Her arms floated at her sides, purposeless. Behind her, her grandmother stood with her hands on her granddaughter’s shoulders and a face as if the morning had lasted a decade. 

Eskel realized that Evva was staring at Katarzina. The older woman stared back. 

He'd had enough of this doomed village with its pyres and secrets. He’d pack up his equipment from Evva’s cottage. Then he’d leave. Soon this would be another moment on the Path that he did not talk about, a story to drop into a bottle of White Gull and drown there.

Eskel lurched to his feet and staggered toward Evva’s cottage without another word to any of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmm so yeah, traumatized group hug?


	6. Between the Path and the Wild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eskel realizes there's another solution and a new contract is made.

Scorpion’s hooves fell heavily on the dirt road out of Aelweir. Eskel forced himself to concentrate on that sound alone. Somewhere beneath the surface of his awareness ran a dark current that seethed back to the tiny village a mile behind him, its sick and dying and the wraith he hadn’t stopped. Couldn’t stop. If he let his mind linger, that current would drag him down into depths he wasn’t sure he’d climb out of.

So, the road. Nothing else worth attention, no past, no future. A witcher without a contract didn’t have anywhere to be, now more than ever. Come winter, there’d be no slow trek back to the Blue Mountains and the winding path toward Kaer Morhen.

Damn it. Doing it again. Listen to those hooves clipping and clopping. Make that steady beat the center of the universe. Like the old man had said in meditation lessons: when the mind wanders, return to the breath. 

Those had been the toughest lessons when they were bright-eyed little boys. Constant combat training and physical conditioning, hours of sword practice-- they all got used to it, even looked forward to it sometimes. But sitting still? For a group of rowdy, wiry boys, that had been the real torture.

One time in meditation, Eskel got so bored he signed Igni under Geralt’s ass just to make something happen. Geralt tried to retaliate, except he wasn’t good with signs yet and he lit Miko’s crotch on fire. Still feel bad about that. Vesemir had them polishing flagstones for weeks as punishment.

But Miko hadn’t survived the Trials, Vesemir was dead, and they’d abandoned Kaer Morhen. Memories of the dead from a vanished place built for something he hadn’t done: stop monsters. The purpose for his training, his Trials, everything he’d endured, and the task he’d failed. 

Scorpion stamped to a halt. Eskel didn’t remember making the decision to pull the reins. Must’ve. No reason for it, though. They stood in the middle of a deserted road in the middle of nowhere, a long way from anything. Had to make good time before nightfall. Eskel remembered the distance to the next city, the long highway, the list of reasonable facts explaining why he couldn’t stop now, remembered them all and still couldn’t make Scorpion take another step. A mile behind them, a boy and the last handful of men lay delirious with fever, a creature no longer human waited in her grave. A mile behind them and growing farther with every hoof fall. 

“Fuck,” Eskel muttered. 

Scorpion’s ear flicked. 

Eskel leaned forward, stroked the muscular withers. “Can’t do it, tough guy. Gotta but I can’t.”

The long black neck stretched as Scorpion lowered his snout to the ground.

“Yeah,” Eskel said. “Good idea. Stop a moment, get my head together. Leaves for you, Swallow for me?”

Dismounting made him remember all of the abuse that his body had endured in the past twenty-four hours. He’d needed Swallow hours ago. Should have taken it before the fight with the pesta. ‘Course, he hadn’t known it was a pesta then. If Evva had said--

Evva. Eskel winced. She was back there, too, beautiful and abandoned. Even focused on the contract, he’d wanted to make something of the way she’d looked at him: in the eyes, human to human. He starved for looks like that. And maybe that was why she could give them: because she starved, too. 

Couldn’t think about it. Nothing he could do for her now.

They left the road. Eskel found a tree that looked halfway comfortable and lowered himself into the bowl carved by its roots. Everything hurt-- shoulder, head, ribs, stomach. He leaned his head back, let the sharp jab of bark against his scalp ground and steady him, and breathed out.

Scorpion dipped his head, one big brown eye slanting toward Eskel as if in question. 

“Sorry, pal.” Eskel opened his palms. Scorpion bent to sniff his open hand and, finding nothing, backed away in barely concealed resentment. “Back to jerky and hardtack for me, grass for you. Gonna have to rough it a while. You remember how to rough it?” 

Scorpion huffed air.

Scorpion was a horse. It was all the reply he could give-- but it hit Eskel like another punch to the chest that he wanted more than a stomped hoof or a blast of grass-breath in response. Happened some nights on the Path. The quiet of the road could be good, a long calming pause between the bouts of violence that funded his life. There was bad quiet, too, the kind that kept you awake holding long imaginary conversations with the dead, that you kept going because there was no one else to talk to.

Who could he have those conversations with? Who was left, of the people who’d look him in the eye?

“We could keep roughin’ it,” Eskel said aloud. Scorpion snuffled unenthusiastically through the undergrowth, not looking at him. “Stay out here. No more findin’ contracts, negotiatin’ fees, draggin’ another batch of drowner heads to a guy who’d sooner spit on you. Just us in the woods, survivin’. Bein’ free. Whattaya say, tough guy?” 

Scorpion tossed his tail and kept snuffling. 

It was bad quiet, even in the sunshine and the brightness of dappled leaves and birdsong. Eskel knew because he could hear himself rambling in his head. He imagined telling Scorpion about his time in the woods, long time ago, times he could barely remember except sometimes the smell of fresh pine sap would hit him just right and the top of his head prickled. 

Wouldn’t believe the story if it hadn’t happened to me, Eskel saw himself saying, and imaginary Scorpion looked at him with soulful equine eyes and bottomless understanding. Went like this: Vesemir took this contract. Couple a townsfolk claimed a werewolf had moved into the woods nearby. Howls late at night, foodstores robbed, footprints in the mud, that kinda thing. Vesemir went hunting, saw canine prints alright, but human too. He followed the prints and found me in the woods. Newly made war orphan that nobody wanted, fell to running with a pack of dogs. Buncha feral mutts. I must’ve gone feral, too. Old man says I damn near bit his ankle tendon in half. Dunno what made him decide that made me witcher material. He got rid of the pack and dragged me to Kaer Morhen. Says I wouldn’t even speak the first couple weeks, just growled. Calmed down with time. Up there, they give you food every day, a bed. Didn’t have to fight anybody for it, didn’t have to sneak around at night stealing. At some point, I started talking again. Took awhile but I got used to it. More or less.

I’m not falling asleep. Just gonna rest my eyes. Point is, tough guy, maybe Vesemir made a mistake. He could’ve left me in the woods with the dogs, or killed us all. I had a pack. I didn’t die with them. Now Vesemir’s gone and I didn’t die with him, either. It’s just me-- the werewolf in the woods. So fuck it. People wanna make monsters, let ‘em. Forget the fighting, the contracts, this bullshit talk. Lemme live out here with the leshens and wargs, my kind of monster, and let ‘em live with the monsters they make.

Vesemir. Talk to me, old man. Three hundred years you did this job. Tell me-- what’s it for?

Per request, he shows up. He’s good like that, Vesemir. 

They’re at the lake north of the keep, where the old hermit used to brew mead. Vesemir’s sitting at the edge of the dock with his legs dangling over the edge so his toes skim the water, a fishing pole in hand. He’s humming.

“Hey old timer,” Eskel says. 

“Mutt! Come have a seat.”

Eskel settles himself on the dock. He can’t remember ever coming down to the lake with Vesemir like this. Come to think of it, Vesemir’s never had time off that they knew about. He was always about Kaer Morhen’s business. 

“Been havin’ a helluva time,” Eskel says. “Could use that old man wisdom right now.”

Vesemir cocks his head at Eskel and grins around the cattail between his teeth.

“Not my job anymore,” Vesemir says. His voice has lost its familiar iron edge. He’s lighter now, almost merry. “I’m retired.”

“Witchers don’t retire,” Eskel grates.

Vesemir shrugs, kicking his feet over the water with a child-like whimsy that would have mortified him in real life. “This one did. Besides, what do you need my help for? Think I would’ve asked you to lead the school if you weren’t capable?”

“Yeah, ‘bout that…”

Vesemir interrupts him with an outstretched hand. As always, Eskel shuts up. He wonders if he’ll ever outgrow that instinct. 

“It’s your Path now, Mutt. You make the decisions.”

“Sure. Been doin’ that.” Eskel watches the careless dangle of Vesemir’s line in the water. “But could be they’re the wrong ones.” 

Vesemir’s moustache tightens around a close-mouthed chuckle. “The wrong ones? You mean the ones I wouldn’t have made?”

There’s a gentle mockery in the voice that keeps Eskel from saying the quick answer: yes. 

“I’m an old man. Isn’t it the role of the young to ignore the old?”

“No,” Eskel says. “Not when you gotta run the Gauntlet for ignorin’ ‘em.” 

Vesemir laughs. It’s loud and outlandish, carefree in a way that a living witcher’s can never be. The old man rests his fishing rod on the deck and claps his free hand on Eskel’s shoulder. “Still trying to be the dutiful one, aren’t you? My loyal Mutt of Surprise. My boy.”

Eskel can’t reply. There’s something in his throat and if he breathes too harshly, it might dislodge.

Something ripples in the water. Vesemir snatches his hand back to grab his fishing rod. “Hold that thought. Think I’ve got a big one!” 

Eskel frowns at the little splashes in the lake. Something’s bothering him. 

Oh yeah-- doesn’t Vesemir hate fishing?

Eskel twitched awake to the sensation of tickle-soft horse lips on his face.

“Uff. Hey there.” Scorpion had so much _face_ to push away. Fending off a length of horse jaw, Eskel pulled together the moment’s details. He still lay slouched against a tree in broad daylight. Not much time had passed. Gods damn, he was getting sloppy. Hadn’t even taken Swallow before passing out. So much for steel before meals.

Scorpion shoved his snout into Eskel’s swollen cheek.

“Ow! What?”

He soon heard what: a distant voice coming from the direction of the road and the snap of branches breaking. 

Eskel laid his palm against Scorpion’s cheek. “You warned me this time. Thanks, pal.”

If horses could roll their eyes.

Eskel rose painfully to his feet. He still felt like hell. But as he listened, the tension drained from his reluctantly tensed muscles. The voice was familiar.

He crashed through the underbrush toward the sounds. Any moment could bring a glimpse. Almost there--

“Eskelll--- Eskel!” Evva ran toward him in the dappled sunlight and in the rush of seeing her face, he forgot what he wasn’t supposed to think about it. She glowed.

“Evva.” Eskel let himself smile. “Tracked me down, huh?”

“Like a foxhound!” Evva stopped within arm’s reach and the genuine warmth in her voice made the balance of proximity and distance feel natural. “Not that it was especially hard. We don’t exactly get much horse traffic in and out of Aelweir. It was pretty easy to follow your tracks.”

“You followed me all this way?”

“What do you mean, ‘all this way’? It’s, what, two miles? Easy. Ish.” She broke into a lopsided grin. “I’m just glad you didn’t go far.”

Eskel winced. “Been a helluva mornin’. Takin’ it slow.”

“Wise, considering.” He could see her eyes tracing the swollen bruises on his face. “Are you… I’m sorry about what happened back there.”

“Not your fault.”

“I think it was. At least a little. I shouldn’t have talked to Vaclav like that. Provoked him. If I hadn’t…”

“Listen. You were right. The man _is_ a maggot-brained clod. Somebody oughta tell him.”

“Hmph. Somebody ought to punch him in the face. Many, many times.” Evva tilted her head consideringly. “You could have-- but you didn’t. Why not?”

“It’s what woulda happened next.”

Evva’s eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

Eskel shook his head. “What’s this about, anyway?” he said quickly. “Followin’ along after me like this?”

Before answering, Evva took a moment to find a comfortable place to lean. She crossed her arms over her chest and propped her shoulder up against a tree trunk. “Mira.” 

“Not gonna let it go, huh.” There was no sarcasm in his voice. He didn’t blame her. 

“No. I can’t.” Evva pressed her arms into her chest more tightly. “I just can’t believe… do you know how hard it was to raise money for the contract? I’m not exactly popular here. Had to drop hints, get people to think it was their own idea… pretend that the money I put in wasn’t mine-- Nana pretended to borrow money from her sister, for gods’ sake. And she didn’t even want a witcher. It took weeks. And now that we _know_ what happened-- we know what Vaclav did, we _know_ there’s something this dangerous… we’re all just going to leave it?”

“Looks like,” Eskel said. 

Leaning casually against a tree didn’t suit the conversation. Evva pushed herself off the tree trunk, pacing through the lightest section of undergrowth without looking at him. 

“That can’t be it. It can’t be over.”

“I’m sorry,” Eskel said, truthfully. “It’s Vaclav’s curse. Vaclav’s to break.”

“But it… there have to be other options. I thought over everything you said, and--” She paused mid-step. “Can’t there be anyone else? The whole village knew she was locked up in there. We didn’t know about the plague, but…”

“He’s the one who kicked her out. His word, his law-- his curse.”

“What about…” Evva took a deep breath. “In the stories… sometimes… true love…?” Her face flushed red. 

On a professional level, Eskel wanted to laugh. The reality was that the guess, the hope, felt too fragile to shatter as directly as he must. “Sorry,” Eskel said gently. 

“But you said she was wearing my pendant.” Her hand rose to the wooden coin hanging from its leather cord.

“Some part of Mira is still in there,” Eskel said. “But what’s there ain’t gonna save her. Has to be something to break her tie to this world, and…” Now it was his turn to take a deep breath. “It ain’t love. It’s rage.” 

The areas around Evva’s sinus cavities flushed red. She sniffed. “There has to be something, Eskel. You said she wasn’t going to stop.”

“She won’t.”

“How can it end this way?” Her voice wavered. She brushed an impatient hand at the tear that had escaped her right eye. “You said she’ll go all over Aedirn, and it’s all-- it’s all because of _him_?”

“It ain’t fair,” Eskel said. “You’re right.” 

His calm only seemed to incense her more. “Not fair? It’s not about fair, it’s about--” Her fingers curled into incoherent fists but Eskel understood. 

“It’s ‘bout the curse,” he said. “Nothin’ matters but the curse.”

“Well…” Evva’s arms jerked desperately at her side. “Does her brother have anything to do with it?”

“Doubt it.”

“Her mother?”

“Evva…”

“Eskel, please. Please, please just think about it-- can her mother help?”

Eskel sighed. “Katarzina didn’t push ‘er out. Said yourself she wasn’t allowed to see ‘er own daughter when she was locked up. So when she couldn’t come home--”

He stopped suddenly.

Evva froze. “What?”

Couldn’t come home. Mira couldn’t come home. 

“Um.” Evva had taken a step closer. “Please. Eskel. Can I hear what you’re thinking? I’m sorry. I’m just very…” She flapped her hands. 

Eskel flashed a quick grin at that. “Alright, alright. Wanna hear me talk shop… I’m thinkin’ about the pesta’s huntin’ habits. Like wolves, wraiths have territories-- ‘cept wraiths can’t leave theirs. Mira died in the granary, but she ain’t stuck there. Means she’s not tied to the physical location of her death-- she’s got no territory-- and that means nothin’s stoppin’ her from leavin’ Aelweir once she’s done here. Bad news.”

“Right.”

“But she hasn’t left, either. Means she’s got debts to settle. Terms of huntin’ patterns, she hunts at night-- standard-- infects folk in their sleep. Materializes at night. Why we had our run-in.” He frowned. “But Rasz. Caught it after huntin’ fireflies. Said they were mean…” He straightened. 

Evva strained her neck, as if trying to get into his view again. “What?” 

“Pesta attacks at night. It must’ve gotten dark by the river. Why the fireflies would’ve been out. Mira must’ve manifested, gotten Rasz with the fleas, same way she did me. Everyone else she could infect at home. But not Rasz, because Vaclav cast ‘er out. And not Vaclav. Which is why she’s stickin’ around, waitin’ for a chance to kill him ‘fore she moves on. _Because she can’t come home._ ”

Evva’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “Okay. I think I understand...? No, actually, I don’t. What?” 

“Means you’re right,” Eskel said. “I thought Vaclav would have to take ‘er back into the family. No-- it’s the house itself. Someone’s gotta take her back in, physically.” He smiled at her, not caring if it pulled at his scars. “And that’s Katarzina’s home, too. She could do it.”

“Wait. So. You’re saying…” Evva spoke carefully. “...Katarzina can break the curse?”

“Yeah. Think so.”

“Oh my gods.” Evva raised her arms. “Oh my gods, I was right! I’m good at this!” 

“You’re not bad.”

“So then--” Evva contained herself by pressing her hand together and bringing them to her mouth. “So then we know how to save her. You can come back and help Mira’s mother do it, and then-- and then she’ll be free. We’ll all be free.” 

“Think you’re forgettin’ somethin’,” Eskel said. “That contract’s finished.”

“Well.” Evva pursed her lips. “Most of it’s my coin. By rights, it’s mine. I should be able to get it back.”

“Yeah? Back from who?”

Evva’s gaze fell. “Vaclav.”

“Yeah, somehow don’t see that happenin’.”

“But…” She looked up at him, eyes sparking between anger and desperation. “You aren’t just going to walk away, are you? There’s a-- a, you know, a plague ghost here. You said yourself that she’s not going to stop.”

“She won’t.”

“So how could you possibly leave without taking care of it? This is what you do, isn’t it? Are you going to let them all die?” 

Eskel turned away. He could hear her huff behind him, but she didn’t move. He looked at the angle of the sunlight through the branches instead. Barely mid-day. 

The road ran hot and dusty out of Aelweir. He saw the option to take it, how it ran alongside the river, through the birches, left past the river sylph’s shrine and back to the road where a bunch of kids had tried to play highway robber and all of this had begun. _Some god guidin’ you to the work that needs doin’_ , the man had said. He could try to ignore that. Eskel saw every step of the road out of Aelweir as surely as he knew he wouldn’t take it. 

Vesemir had always told them not to get involved, as if neutrality were a genuine option. What a godsdamned lie. The existence of a contract meant choosing a side. There was no such thing as neutrality with monsters, and pretending differently was the worst choice of all. 

_Who are you, Mutt?_ Usually those questions sounded like Vesemir's voice, but he heard this one in his own. 

And Eskel knew the answer. He was a witcher of the Wolf School, a professional. He dealt with monsters-- not for free, but the price didn’t matter. It was the decision to claim the work as his own, to allow for a price at all.

“There _is_ another option.” Eskel turned toward Evva’s hopeful look. “A new contract, with different payment.”

“...different payment?” Her eyes darkened.

“Not that,” Eskel said. “The Law of Surprise.” 

“Oh.” Suspicion cleared from her brow, leaving confusion. “I mean-- that’s accommodating and all, but... well, you’ve seen where we live. Your reward’s likely to be a-- I don’t know, a dead bird that flew into a window.”

Eskel shrugged. “If it’s a dead bird, it’s a dead bird I’m meant to have. Call it destiny.” 

“Really?” Evva searched his face. “So… you’ll come back and help us? And in return, you’ll take… what, exactly?”

“What you find at home, but don’t expect. Contract’d be with Katarzina.”

“Ah.” Evva cleared her throat. “That might be hard to manage. They don’t want you back in the village, and she and I aren’t on great terms, after... everything.”

This kept getting better. He was going to ride back to a town that had driven him out for a contract that might not exist and, if it did, would probably get him-- what, a sack of rye? A pile of rabbit dung? 

Being a professional was some godsdamned work. 

“We’ll figure out somethin’,” Eskel said. “Know any back roads? Somethin’ tells me I’m better off stayin’ out of sight.” 

Evva smiled and held out her hand for him to take. “Follow me. I know just the place.” 

***

It was her workshop. Or had been, once. While they waited for Evva’s grandmother to return with Katarzina, Eskel ran his fingers over the half-finished wooden sculptures that littered the clearing. Evva had picked a good spot for their rendezvous-- secluded, but close enough to the village that they shouldn’t have to wait long. 

“Do you like that one?” Evva said, looking up from a small piece she was whittling in her lap.

Eskel brushed his thumb down the edge of a stylized cat ear that had been carved in wood the color of sand. “Closest I’ve been to a cat in awhile, is all.” He nodded at her busy hands. “Workin’ on another piece for the collection?”

“No. Well, yes, but not this collection. It’s to be my offering for Federbludd.” Evva paused with her blade to pick at a stubborn splinter. “Only a day left to go, you know.” 

“Hm. Can’t reuse somethin’ from last year?”

Evva set her work in her lap. “Are you serious? Is that what _you_ do at Yule, or on naming-days?” 

Giving gifts at Yule. The witchers had never done so. There were no shops close to Kaer Morhen, no traveling merchants who knew the secret path that wound into the Blue Mountains. Their trainers mentioned the holiday, but all it meant was half a day off from training so the grown witchers could get drunk in the main hall. Which was what they pretty much did now that they were grown witchers themselves. Or had done, back when there was a reason to return to Kaer Morhen.

“Yeah,” Eskel lied cheerfully. “Teaches people to keep their expectations low. Saves coin.” 

Evva threw a piece of wood shaving at him. “That’s what I say to that.” 

Eskel found one of the wood pieces where it had fallen far afield and held it up. “Thanks for the thoughtful gift. See? You’re learnin’.”

Evva scoffed at her work in progress, which she’d resumed whittling. “You know, I actually was going to thank you for something. Before I learned what a mess you are.”

“Good. ‘cause you don’t need to thank me for anythin’.” 

Evva dropped her work into her lap so she could focus her attention on him. “I know I don’t need to. I want to. You’re the first man who’s ever been kind to me about Mira. Do you know that? When you heard we were together, you just… accepted it. Talked about it so normal-like.”

“Uh.” Eskel shrugged. “It ain’t normal?”

“Well.” Evva flapped one hand. “I mean. You’re a witcher. Maybe it’s normal for you.”

“Huh. Some advice: get yourself to a city.” 

“That _was_ the plan.” 

“Could still be the plan. For yourself.”

Evva glanced at him, looked away, let her breath out. “Yes, but-- what’s the point, if I’m alone? Everything I know is here. In this stupid, stupid place.”

He didn’t say anything. After a long pause, Evva found him, searched his face. Eskel met her eyes, raised his eyebrows, as if to say: Yeah?

“Is it actually different?” Her tone had softened. Her eyes, too, child-big. “In other places?”

Eskel huffed a non-answer. From what he’d seen of Aelweir, cities might as well have been unicorn realms circling the stars to her. She wanted some poignant, powerful answer from him, he could tell, proof that a dream was real. But cities weren’t dreams to him. They were sewage, crowds, notice boards, mental maps of which taverns to avoid and which ones kept the beer coming, faceless tides of people he didn’t care about who didn’t care about him. 

“World’s big,” he said finally. “Walk it long enough, you’ll find what you’re lookin’ for.”

“Um. Forgive me if that’s not exactly inspiring.”

“Forgiven.”

They grinned at each other, and Evva laughed. 

“After this...” She was still smiling but it faded as she spoke. “Is that where you’ll head? A city?”

“Probably. Put enough folk in one place, somebody’ll wanna give me work.” Eskel tilted his head up. Few clouds lined the sky, but a gentle breeze relieved the heat. “But like I said. World’s big.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve barely left Aelweir, except to build furniture a couple miles away.”

“Try it sometime.” 

Evva’s eye glinted consideringly. “Now there’s an idea, Eskel.” 

She sounded as if she was about to say more, but another sound interrupted her: footsteps approaching. Both of them sat up straighter. 

Evva’s grandmother appeared first, muttering under her breath about the barbed vines that clung to her skirt and refused to let go. She stomped into the clearing at last. Close behind came Katarzina, who picked her way delicately among the undergrowth with her skirt held up in her hands. A look of trepidation stole onto her face at the sight of the witcher-- and then something else entirely when she saw Evva.

“You.” Katarzina snapped toward Evva’s grandmother. “You didn’t say she’d be here.”

“Ah, come now, Kat.” The old woman planted her fists on her hips. “Who do ya suppose ran on and fetched the witcher back, eh? Ya ‘magined I galloped after ‘im like a spring mare? With my knees?”

Evva’s eyes seethed. She swallowed as if physically swallowing words down. 

“She’s been a big help,” Eskel offered. “Helped give me a new perspective on your case. With Mira.”

Her daughter’s name doused the flames that had been building in Katarzina’s eyes. She lowered herself onto one of the half-finished sculptures that Evva had made. “Dajmira… I heard you say-- is it all true, what you said? Did Vaclav know?”

“Lemme put it this way. How did he react?”

Katarzina turned her face away. Evva’s grandmother stood behind her, rubbing her hand soothingly over the woman’s shoulders while she shot Eskel a withering look.

“Plague,” Katarzina whispered. “Vaclav, what were you thinking.”

Eskel let a moment pass so the woman could compose herself. “Wanted to talk to you ‘bout helpin’ Mira,” he said in what he hoped was a gentle rumble. “And everyone else. This pesta was created by a kind of curse-- a… well, a bad death. Break the curse, it’ll turn her back, release her spirit. Vaclav won’t do it. Dead end. But… you might not be.”

Katarzina lifted her head. “What are you saying? Am I-- involved in this curse?”

“That’s right,” he said. “See-- Mira died because she was cast out of the home.” Katarzina winced. “She still can’t enter. That’s why your boy didn’t catch it ‘til he was outside the house, after dark. Why Vaclav still hasn’t. Now, what that means--”

“The fireflies.” Katarzina buried her face in her hands. “Oh, why was I so stupid. I should have just left him at home. Caught some fireflies myself and brought them back in a jar-- gods, this is my fault.”

Evva’s grandmother rested her hand on Katarzina’s shoulder. “Ya didn’t know, Kat, ya didn’t know.”

“No, but-- gods, all of this wretchedness…”

“You can fix it now.” Eskel leaned forward. “You can be the one to take ‘er back. Invite her back in, take her across the threshold-- and she’s home. The curse, gone.”

“ _I_ can?” Katarzina shook her head. “I don’t know how you figure that. Vaclav already said no.”

“You’re her mother,” Eskel said. “It’s your home, too.”

“No. It’s not.” Katarzina’s fingers entwined together in a tortured, white-knuckled knot. “I once thought I could make it mine. But Vaclav’s word is law. Isn’t that the way of things in Aelweir? Man obeys the gods, woman obeys man?” Her mouth contorted around the words, where a bitter smile had failed to form. “I have no power over that man.”

“Don’t need it,” Eskel said. “We’re talkin’ ‘bout curses. Old magic, deep magic. Different kind of power.”

Evva’s grandmother paused with her hand lingering on Katarzina’s shoulders. Her lips had folded together thoughtfully. “Well, puttin’ aside the strangeness of all this, it makes a loony kind of sense,” she said. “Ya’re her mother, Kat. Once they’re grown, children only need one thing from their parents.”

“Some mother I was.” Now the bitter smile came over her. “I don’t understand. She’d been so close to her father once. She idolized him. And then…” Her eyes narrowed on Evva. “You. You filled her head with nonsense that got her killed--”

Evva leapt to her feet. “Don’t you dare blame me. It was obvious how much Mira hated this place! You knew that. She went to you, didn’t she? About Madergidd? If you knew how many times we met in this place--” Her arm flung out to encompass the clearing. “--and she cried and cried thinking of those slobbering hairy men leering at her like she was already theirs--”

Katarzina laid her palms against her thighs. Her voice had turned to ice. “Just because you don’t have a mother to present you--”

“Now Kat,” the old woman warned. 

“I had a mother.” Evva raised her chin, a fierce pride burning through her even through her rage. “Nana raised me better than any mother in this village. Especially one like you.”

Forgotten by all three women, Eskel kept still. These weren’t his fights. And if things got really heated, there was always Axii.

“You little girl. What can you possibly know.” Katarzina rose slowly as well, a terrible dignity in the set of her jaw. “Where I come from, you’d be married off at thirteen. You’d already have three babes with another on the way, all to secure your father’s fortunes in the spice market. Would you prefer that?”

“That’s not the point! You abandoned her!” Evva nearly spat the words in Katarzina’s face. “She needed your help. And you wouldn’t-- even-- listen!”

“What would you have me do?” The older woman kept deadly calm in the face of Evva’s fire. “Do you think there’s any place for a disobedient woman in this village, child?” 

“Anything! You could have done _anything_!” Evva’s voice rose in pitch until it cracked on the final word. She turned suddenly away, burying her face in her hands.

Katarzina’s face did not soften as the crying girl turned away. It did not change at all until Evva’s grandmother stood alongside her, not touching her now except for the brush of shoulder against shoulder.

“Ya know that cottage’s not made of stone, yeah?” the old woman said.

Katarzina’s mouth tightened. “I know.”

“Ya know we all hear what happens in that house?”

Katarzina shook her head, once, slowly. “The same thing that happens in every house here. Isn’t it?”

The old woman sighed. “Not mine,” she muttered.

Katarzina smiled slightly. “A lucky thing, to be a widow.”

Evva found one of her almost-finished sculptures to sit upon. After a beat, Katarzina returned to her own seat as well. Silence fell over the clearing and in it, Eskel listened to the women’s heartbeats settle into a slower, calmer rhythm. They couldn’t know, but their hearts beat almost in sync. 

“Yes,” Katarzina said suddenly. “She did come to me.”

Evva lifted her head, her red-rimmed eyes.

Katarzina’s shoulders shook a little. “You’re right. Of course. I’m sure she told you. She didn’t want to be given away at Madergidd. But I thought it was for-- other reasons. A mother knows her child, whatever you may think. I’d see her sitting for hours, weaving her sandwort. The flower of Enovin. She’d sing to herself, too. All the obvious signs, but I didn’t want to press her. These things develop in their own time. I assumed that… at Madergidd… the gentleman would present himself. That it would be obvious from the way he looked at her and she looked at him, and I would make certain, absolutely certain, she had the man with whom she was so infatuated. And then, one day, we were doing laundry by the river... and you walked by.” Katarzina looked at Evva, but the venom had left her gaze. “The way she looked at you... I will always remember it. The look in her eyes. I thought I didn’t understand it then. Or… I chose not to.

“And then Vaclav saw.” Katarzina closed her eyes on her exhale. “So much I gave up for that girl. You don’t see it and you never will, but by all the gods, I gave her all I could. All I knew how. I just… I only wanted her to be happier than I was.” 

Katarzina and Evva could not look at each other. Each turned her head aside, each wiped away tears she did not want the other to see. 

“You left them up,” Evva said quietly. “Mira’s sandwort.”

“Yes,” Katarzina said. 

“Even though you knew what they were. What they meant.”

“...yes. My daughter was gone. They were all I had left of her.” Pause. “I didn’t tell Vaclav what they meant. He’s never liked elven stories.”

Their hearts beat slow and calm.

“Evva.”

Evva looked up. Katarzina’s eyes looked so tired. 

“Was she happy with you?”

Evva could only nod at first. “Yes. When we were together.” She nodded at the clearing around them. “We’d meet here sometimes. To be alone. To be… happy.”

The silence throbbed like an open wound.

Evva had to hold her breath to say it. “She made me happy, too.” 

“Well,” Katarzina said. She lowered her head. Her hair hung around her face, but Eskel could hear the patter of her tears as they fell on her lap. “Well, then.” 

Another silence lingered, but this one felt different. 

Katarzina lifted her head and pushed her hair behind her shoulders. Bloodshot, face red, she looked haggard, but she held herself with a poise that must have been bred into her far from Aelweir, in the richer streets of Vergen amidst talk of silk and spice. “Eskel. This curse. What does it require? How does one lift it?”

“A ritual,” Eskel said, “to call Mira up. An invitation to take her home across the threshold. And a witcher’s contract to see it all through.”

Katarzina closed her eyes and shook her head once. “We’ve no more coin. I don’t know where Vaclav keeps it.”

“Don’t need coin,” he said. “If you agree to the terms, give me what you find at home, but don’t expect.”

“A Surprise?” Katarzina smiled faintly. “We’ve very few of those, Eskel. This will amount to charity. You know that.”

“Ain’t charity. Destiny.”

Katarzina seemed to accept that. If he truly had to explain, Eskel would have said that the price no longer mattered, not even destiny mattered. Grand as it was, some things were more important than destiny-- like looking down a heat-baked road in the middle of nowhere and picking a Path.

“Destiny,” Katarzina whispered. “Is that what it takes? For Dajmira and I to make peace again-- we needed fate to intervene?”

“No,” Eskel said. “Just takes a choice.”

She gazed at something overhead. Eskel felt compelled to follow her gaze. Nothing there but leaves and forest sunlight.

“Then I choose the contract.” Katarzina let her gaze tumble back down to earth and to Eskel. “What I find at home and do not expect-- if you’ll save my daughter.”

“Deal,” Eskel said.

Evva sighed with relief.

“Well, that’s lovely,” Evva’s grandmother said. “If we’re all done cryin’ now-- me own stomach’s too empty for any more chattin’. What do we say to a bite to eat?”


	7. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eskel and Katarzina try to bring Mira home. There are only two problems: the plague maiden and Vaclav.

“What is that?” Katarzina spoke so unobtrusively, Eskel took a moment to realize the words were meant for him, though they stood alone in the night air. 

It was the first either of them had spoken for some time. The sweep of the night wind through the graveyard, still ashy with funeral pyres, didn’t invite conversation. Neither did the gleam of the nearly-full moon on the shabby wooden markers or the piles of woven arenarias that Katarzina had untied from her cottage roof and folded into a bundle at her feet. Flowers for the dead-- a fitting summons for the pesta.

Eskel worked the fresh taste of rebis and Quebirth around his tongue and held up the empty bottle. “Don’t worry. Ain’t drinkin’ on the job. It’s a witcher potion-- helps me see what’s invisible.” 

“What’s invisible.” Katarzina shuffled her weight. “Do you mean Dajmira? I won’t be able to see her?”

“You will. When she chooses to show herself.” Or if she attacked. Eskel chose not to mention that. “Gotta warn you… when you do see ‘er, she won’t look the way you remember.”

Katarzina winced. “Don’t tell me.” 

Dried stalks rustled in a breeze that lifted through the fields, and they let it fold the conversation into silence. He squinted at the village. Not much movement tonight. They’d waited until dark, and then he’d taken the long way around the village, through the woods by the river. The townsfolk hadn’t shown him much love that morning-- much better if they missed his return.

The plan wasn’t bad. Evva’s grandmother would knock at Vaclav’s door and tell him about some urgent omen that he needed to see immediately. When Evva saw that Vaclav was out of the way, she’d blow out the candle that now glowed steadily in her cottage window. That would be the signal to Katarzina and Eskel to start the ritual, attract the pesta’s attention. Evva’s grandmother would keep Vaclav occupied long enough for Katarzina to talk Mira into coming home. They needed enough time to get her across the front threshold. If Eskel’s theory proved true, that would mark the end of the curse-- and the plague maiden. It was also the only theory he had, so when he visualized the steps of the plan, every route, every cottage they’d pass along the way, his imagination ended at Katarzina’s door with the sole thought of _please fucking work_. 

The plan had risks. It depended on none of the townsfolk looking out their windows, on Vaclav’s gullibility and the old woman’s gab. At least the last had proved considerable. There was no way around risk while trying to smuggle a plague maiden into a cottage in the center of the village. If something went wrong, that’s what Eskel was there for. Every scenario that required him was messy, though, and got messier fast. His thoughts for those contingency plans concentrated on a handful of goals: contain the threat, keep as many people alive as possible, when possible. The rest, unknowable. 

Eskel should have been used to this-- the plan, the prep, the wait. Except this plan didn’t depend on him. It depended on Katarzina-- her level head when the plague maiden appeared, her steady voice when she spoke to a maggot-ridden carcass as if she could still see her daughter. 

Katarzina might have shared his thoughts. Her gaze skittered to the still-lit candle in Evva’s window and back to Mira’s grave. The wooden marker was crudely carved, showing none of the skill that Eskel had seen in Evva’s work. The villagers must not have let her carve it. One last little cruelty after a heap of them, and now it fell to a daughterless mother, a loverless woman, an old widow, and a witcher to undo what had been wrought here. Those people who had gathered before the offering tree hours ago to watch Vaclav beat him, throw rocks, yell for his blood-- would they regret it now? If Katarzina failed, the pesta killed Rasz, Vaclav, Lukaz, every last man and boy, and stories trickled into Aelweir of the mysterious plague that killed Aedirn’s men-- how would they talk about this day?

The answer floated into Eskel’s mind as easily as the question: same as they talked about Mira now, same reason he hadn’t heard her name until Evva said it. They wouldn’t.

A sound interrupted his thoughts. A heartbeat-- Katarzina’s, hammering in her chest. He saw the delicate bones of her hands straining against skin as she clamped them together. No good. Had to get her out of her own head. 

“Figured out what you’re gonna say?” Eskel said.

“Not yet.” Her voice sounded controlled but beneath it, he could hear her heart thundering. “I, ah. I can’t say I’ve ever spoken with a ghost before.” 

Humor. Good. Meant she was keeping a level head. Maybe this plan would work after all. “Not much different after the first impression.” Eskel tried a lighter tone of voice. “Gotta be honest-- she won’t win any singin’ contests. And her face might be, ah, distractin’. ‘neath everything else, she’s still your daughter. Remember that-- and keep ‘er calm.”

“Yes. I remember.” Katarzina tried to smile but her nerve cracked. “Oh, what’s taking them so long?”

Eskel squinted toward the village. The candle flame still glowed brightly in Evva’s window. “Maybe she talked him asleep.”

“Huhnn.” 

Eskel squinted at Katarzina in the darkness. She clenched her jaw so tightly, the tendons in her neck might’ve been carved out of rock. Not a promising start. In his experience, folk reacted poorly to their first sighting of a wraith. There tended to be screaming. If she looked like this now, before there was even a whiff of the pesta....

“Hey… Katarzina.”

She didn’t look at him. Instead her jaw clenched even more tightly. The woman was going to break her teeth. “Look.”

Eskel followed her gaze across the darkened fields to the village. Then he saw it: Evva’s window had darkened.

Eskel straightened. “There it is.”

“The signal.” That heartbeat, that shakiness in her lungs.

“Katarzina.” 

She stared at the window where the candlelight had been. 

_“Katarzina.”_

Katarzina finally turned toward him. The moonlight glittered in the eye that faced the village. She did not look like a woman prepared to look a pesta in the face and speak calm, soothing words until her daughter emerged. 

For a delirious moment Eskel considered Axii. But no. This was her contract as well as his. “You can do this,” he said softly. “A’right?”

Katarzina exhaled, the kind of breath that scraped up dregs from the bottom of her lungs. “Can I?” she asked, the words bordered by a hysterical little laugh.

Eskel hesitated. Katarzina wasn’t Evva. Slowly, trying not to spook her, he settled his hand on her shoulder. She tensed but didn’t flinch away. 

“Yeah,” he said, quiet.

The one moonlit eye stared back, desperate to believe him. 

“Katarzina.” An idea had come to him. Better than Axii, anyway. “Quick favor? Breathe with me.”

“Eskel, we don’t have time…”

“Yeah we do. One breath. Here we go.”

Eskel breathed in loudly, exaggerating the hiss of oxygen through airways. Katarzina hesitated, but only briefly. Her arm shifted beneath his palm as her shoulders rose with the intake of air. They held their breath together, Katarzina watching him for her cue. Letting him teach her. He held her gaze, made sure she heard the reversal when he let air leak out between his lips, slow enough to hypnotize a heartbeat into slackening. Both of their shoulders sagged with the slow release of air.

Eskel let the moment linger. Katarzina’s heart still beat too hard, but the angle of her shoulders had softened. She took another breath on her own. Simple tool, but sometimes simple was best. Like the old man had said-- you can always return to the breath.

Her moonlit eye found his.

“A’right?” Eskel said.

“Alright,” Katarzina said. 

Eskel inclined his head. They turned to face the dead woman’s grave, where the pesta would rise with its rotting claws, its rats and the fleas that could take even a witcher down. 

And he was getting paid by Surprise. It ought to be something useful this time. Like a donkey. 

Assuming he survived.

“Alright,” Eskel muttered. 

He signed Igni on the pile of tangled fabric at Katarzina’s feet. The flowers burst into bright yellow flame and forced them to squint against the sudden flare of light. 

“Say the words.”

Katarzina lifted her palms. “By the powers of earth and sky,” she said in a voice high and shaking, “by the world now lost to you, I call you, Dajmira, my daughter and my blood-- I call you to a mother’s embrace.”

The wind roared in the rushes. Eskel fell back to stand by Katarzina’s side and slightly behind her. Everything rattled in the wind, trees, dried stems, the rye fields. He squinted, tried to peer into the darkness for a hint of the pesta.

The medallion jumped against his chest. He whirled but there was nothing behind him. 

“What?” Katarzina’s voice, terrified. 

“She’s here.” Where, though? Fucking where? 

He heard it first-- the buzz of a thousand flies gathered from nowhere. Then it came, darkness erupting from the soil and thickening into a form that he could see without the potion. Katarzina gasped, staggered. He grasped her shoulder to steady her. Yellow firelight flicked across the tattered skirts, the husk of a ribcage, the pits of maw and eye sockets. The air crawled with the skittering claws and squeaks of rats. The plague maiden had come. 

Katarzina shuddered silently in Eskel’s grip. 

The pesta’s hair rippled above its head. _Yes… **Mother?**_ Its voice was the drone of an insect swarm. 

“Daj… Dajmira? Is that--” Katarzina clutched at her stomach. The stench had hit. She turned aside, out of Eskel’s reach. “Oh, gods…”

She could vomit on her own damned time. Any breach in concentration and they might lose the pesta’s attention. “Katarzina,” Eskel said, his voice low but insistent. “Try to focus. She needs you.”

The billowing shreds of the pesta’s skirts parted, and tens of rodent eyes glittered in their shadows. They focused on Eskel. The chittering grew louder. _Mutant. You should be dead._

“No.” Katarzina’s throat closed around the word, but she forced herself to speak anyway. “He won’t hurt you, Dajmira. He’s only here to help. Help me talk to you.”

_Talk? **Now** you want to talk?_ The insect drone of its voice deepened into a bass that Eskel could feel in his chest. _You’re terribly late, Mother._

“I am. I wasn’t there when you needed me.” Katarzina reached out with a trembling hand. “There’s nothing I can ever do to take that back. And I know that. I’m so, so sorry. Baby. I’m sorry.”

_It’s too late now._ The long serpentine tongue whiplashed in the air. 

“It’s not too late.” Her voice sounded strained. Katarzina swallowed but it helped nothing. “This man-- he’s a witcher-- he says we can break this curse. We can help you.” 

_Help me?_ A furious eruption of chittering burst from her skirts. The rat eyes winked in and out of the rapidly shifting shadows. _You never helped me. You never stood up to Father, you never fought back. Well, I’m fighting back now, Mother._

Eskel lowered his head to speak close to Katarzina’s ear. “Calm ‘er down,” he murmured.

“Let’s t-talk about this. Please.” Katarzina’s eyes didn’t know where to look. Whenever they caught the pesta’s wreckage of a face, she flinched and looked away. “Your brother is dying.”

_Yes. And Father will, too._

“Dajmira. That’s your family.”

_My family?_

The back of Eskel’s head went cold. 

_The family that locked me in that granary all those nights-- alone-- in the cold? The family that called me an abomination and wouldn’t let me out when the rats came? That family?_

Some of the rats left the swirling tatters of her skirts and ran up and down the length of her wasted torso, dark slips of shadow in the moonlight. A cloud of flies had gathered around her head. 

Katarzina’s lips trembled. “We-- we were foolish--”

_You let me die!_ The roar was a sudden furious buzzing of flies, a chorus of rat shrieks-- and somewhere buried deep, the wail of a young woman who died alone in the dark. _You, Mother. All of you!_

Eskel put his hand on Katarzina’s shoulder. Her entire body jerked. 

“We didn’t know.” It was a sputter, a sob. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I let you become this. Melitele’s mercy. This is my fault. But I can save you now, baby, please, let me save you.” 

A rat’s snout emerged from the darkness of the pesta’s maw, at the base of the long tongue. Katarzina gagged and turned her face away.

“This isn’t who you are,” she said, strangled, to the fields. “This isn’t you.” 

_How would you know, Mother?_

Katarzina lifted her arm, tried to make a gesture. But she couldn’t look at the thing that was once her daughter, couldn’t speak through her closed throat. 

A halo of flies burst around the plague maiden’s head. It was swarming, rippling darkness, devouring the moonlight. _You can’t look. Is it so horrible? This ‘violation of the natural order,’ as he says? You never disagreed. Now you’re both right. Here I am, Mother! Here!_

The plague maiden raised its head, exposing the long stretch of its mutilated face to the sky, and the halo of flies disappeared inside its yawning maw. Inside, the insect buzz concentrated into a single maddening roar, one moment of horrible warning. Then a nightmare swarm burst from the jawless face and flew toward Katarzina. She didn’t even have time to scream. 

Igni caught the insects in a wall of flame. They ignited inches in front of Katarzina’s face and fell as ash. 

Eskel’s sword leapt into his hand before the flames faded. He thrust at the pesta’s jaw. The blade flashed, silver-bright, deadly, through empty air. The pesta had dematerialized. He whirled and caught the dim outlines of her presence shifting aside. But she wasn’t running away, only circling for an opening. The moonlight flashed over the bony talons that slashed at Katarzina’s back. They scraped against the shimmering surface of a Quen shield, sliding harmlessly off. 

The plan was fucked. Now he had one goal: keep Katarzina alive. The pesta attacked, Eskel parried, and Katarzina huddled in place, covering her face with her arms. It left him at a disadvantage. He couldn’t slash too wide, couldn’t move too far, or he’d leave Katarzina vulnerable. The pesta knew it and attacked with her talons from the left, the rats from the ground, the lash of her impossibly long rotted tongue from the right. Eskel couldn’t even find an opening for an attack-- the pesta was everywhere, and Katarzina was too damned slow. She’d never reach a safe distance in time. 

Eskel slashed the talons away again and a sudden flash of memory came to him: Kaer Morhen, Vesemir surrounded by Wild Hunt warriors, outnumbered, Ciri down. The Hunt closed in, and then Vesemir--

Eskel knew. He threw himself at the pesta anew with savage cuts, the wild brutality of a young novice before defeat taught him strategy. It was enough to force the pesta back, opening a space between them. Eskel raised his sword as if setting up a bone-crushing blow. Instead he pivoted and hurled the Aard sign at Katarzina, just as Vesemir had cast it at Ciri. The air exploded into Katarzina’s chest and hurled her backward, sent her tumbling down the grass and away from the battle. 

The plague maiden hesitated for one crucial moment. It could follow Katarzina, leaving its back exposed to Eskel’s strikes. Or it could fight him with no obstacle between them, monster to mutant.

The plague maiden’s skull shone bone-pale as it faced Eskel fully. 

_This time, you die._

“Pro’lly,” Eskel agreed. 

For the price of a dead bird?

No. For something both less and more. 

He dropped his hand to make the Yrden sign, but she’d learned his tricks. The decaying flesh of her tongue slapped against his wrist, harmless except it hurled his arm aside and interrupted the sign. Her talons flashed out. He caught only the moonlight on their tips and then he was falling backwards, not bleeding, the claws had scraped across his armor, but now he lay prone and at eye level the rodent eyes flashed in her skirts, the unholy halo of insects swarmed, and Eskel heard in his head _you got involved, you got involved_ in the pesta’s voice, though it could not have been her-- and who would bring his medallion home now? But Eskel wasn’t finished. He rolled up on his shoulders and slashed above his head in a wide arc, sloppy but vicious enough that she pulled back-- but the rats, the rats that now spilled from her skirts and surged toward him on the ground in a scurrying mass of fangs--

“Mira!” 

Everything froze. Each individual rat paused exactly where it stood. Only the plague maiden’s hair still moved, wafting like some willowy underwater weed.

“Mira!” Footsteps, the scent of cedar and lavender, and then Evva emerged into view, hiking up her skirt as she ran up the last hill to the gravesite. 

Small, scurrying motions on the ground. The rats retreated into the plague maiden’s skirts. 

_Evva._

The creature’s voice wasn’t a demonic thrum anymore but a weak buzz, a lone fly circling. 

Evva stumbled to a halt just out of arm’s distance of the plague maiden. “Gods.” She inhaled with the face of someone who needed to sneeze but couldn’t. Somehow, she managed the tentative beginnings of a smile anyway. “I never thought I’d see you again. That’s…” Her shoulders shuddered briefly, the steadiness of her expression faltered. “...a new look.”

The plague maiden turned her back to Evva. _Don’t look at me. You weren’t supposed to see me like this._

It gave Evva the moment she needed to find her composure. “Why not?” She circled around to see the creature’s face once more. “You remember last Lammas, when you fell asleep in the field? Your face peeled for weeks.” She swallowed but tried to smile, even if it strained at the edges. “I still liked you then... in all your snakeskin. It was still you in there. It’s still you now.”

_You’re lying._ The black swarm began to hum. _You didn’t help me, either. You didn’t come._

“I tried. Don’t you remember?”

The pesta’s long, curling tongue hung in the air. _There was shouting…_

“They wouldn’t let me talk to you. A whole wall of them. They wouldn’t even let me come to your funeral. But I never stopped thinking about you. Praying for you.” Evva took a step closer. One hand reached for the leather cord around her own neck, and she pulled the wooden pendant and its arenaria carving into view. “Just like Enovin. No matter how many trials.” Her voice quaked, but not with fear. 

_You’re in pain._ The creature’s tongue whiplashed back on itself. _My father hurt you. Hurt us. But I can hurt him now. I can make them all pay._

Evva swallowed. “You could. But that’s not the Mira I know. The Mira I know knitted me a little blue cat. Remember? I was silly and left it where Jurek’s pups would get it. And that Mira made a lovely bandage for Sir Meow until he felt better. Do you remember that Mira? She didn’t even want a toy to get hurt.”

The plague maiden’s sockets were fixed on Evva. Its voice had diminished to a dim hum. _She’s gone._

“No. She’s right in front of me.”

Slowly, Evva reached out to the plague maiden. The creature did not move, letting the living girl reach for the leather cord around its own neck and pull the matching wooden pendant free. The reality of her fingers on the wood set something loose in Evva. She took a sharp breath and blinked. 

“Please,” she whispered. 

Hesitantly at first, then with more certainty, Evva bent her head forward until she touched her forehead to the pesta’s, warm skin to withered bone. The rotting creature didn’t move. It let itself be touched.

Evva closed her eyes. “Please don’t let them do this,” she whispered. “Don’t let them destroy you.”

Eskel turned away. Down the hill, he saw Katarzina laboring toward him. 

“Katarzina,” he called softly. “You a’right?”

“Don’t worry about me. Where’s--” The words died in her throat as she topped the rise and saw her daughter’s wraith and Evva pressing their heads together in the moonlight. 

Eskel laid a hand on Katarzina’s shoulder. She didn’t respond to his gentle pressure at first. It took her a few moments to get her eyes’ fill, to follow the witcher’s hand and turn her back to the two lovers. She did turn, though. 

Eskel and Katarzina stood side by side, watching the stillness of the village and the summer night sky. They listened for a while to the rustling of stalks in the breeze. 

_Witcher._

Eskel and Katarzina turned. The pesta floated close to the ground, its long, cruel talons carried delicately, absurdly in Evva’s hand. 

_This curse. _No buzzing. The voice was almost human. _How can it be broken.___

__Eskel bowed his head to Katarzina. “Just follow her.”_ _

__Katarzina breathed slowly through her mouth. Her eyes moved from the remnants of her daughter to Evva to their linked hands. “That’s right, child. Just follow me. I’ll take you home. Where you belong. And then...” Her voice cracked. “...you’ll be at peace.”_ _

__Evva silently squeezed the creature’s talons._ _

___Go. I will follow._ _ _

__Katarzina didn’t turn right away. Instead her gaze lingered on Evva’s human hand in the plague maiden’s claws. Her jaw flexed and Eskel guessed what she was thinking: it should have been her, mother and daughter, breaking the curse hand in hand._ _

__“Katarzina,” Eskel said softly, “ain’t much time.”_ _

__She looked at him with a face that flitted among expressions. “Alright,” she said in a voice like mourning. She turned and began a slow walk down the cemetery hill alone, Eskel following, Evva and Mira last._ _

__Eskel sheathed his sword. So they’d summoned a plague maiden, and no one died. Not bad._ _

__But they weren’t done yet. This was the part where they tried to smuggle a plague maiden into the middle of the village with no one noticing. They’d agreed on the quietest path to Katarzina and Vaclav’s door. Had the fight been loud enough to wake anyone? Hell if he could remember. Leftover adrenaline still jittered in his legs. Hard to tell if the rats’ chittering had echoed through the whole damned region or if someone six feet away wouldn’t have heard it. Battle amplified everything, even as it muddied sensation into a single frantic blur._ _

__Luckily the village lay quiet as the four of them approached. No lit windows, no light coming from underneath doorways. Good. If Evva’s grandmother had managed to keep Vaclav’s attention for all of this time, then they could get Mira across the threshold before he knew it-- or, depending what Katarzina wanted, without him ever knowing it._ _

__Eskel strained to hear the ambient sounds as they entered the village outskirts. He could hear the faint rumbling of snoring behind a wall and a few shuffling footsteps here and there. Normal nighttime noises. Someone sneezed. Someone in another cottage paced by the front door, probably just putting out the last coals of the cookfire..._ _

__Eskel held up his arm. “Wait-- stop!”_ _

__Katarzina halted. A cottage door squeaked open, and a woman stepped through with a saucer of milk in hand. Her offering for the domovoi. She gave them what started as a cursory glance, until she saw--_ _

__Fuck._ _

__“Demon!” the woman shrieked. “There’s a demon loose!”_ _

__“Eh? What?” someone called from inside the cottage._ _

___”Demon! The witch has come! Everyone hide!” The saucer of milk spilled from her hand. She leapt back into her cottage and slammed the door shut._ _ _

___Now Eskel heard sounds from all of the cottages around them: doors opening, urgent voices, footsteps pounding on floorboards-- and now, screams._ _ _

___“Outta time,” he hissed. “Go! Now!”_ _ _

___“Come on!” Evva tugged on the plague maiden’s claws. The two of them overtook Katarzina and the older woman ran to catch up with them, still stiff from her tumble down the graveyard hill. Doors opened around them, more voices, new shrieks of terror. The sight of a plague maiden shot hysteria through the village like lightning. Damn it. If they’d had her dematerialize first-- but then, how would they have kept her calm-- too late, too late. Had to get her to the threshold before Vaclav got there first. Everything depended on it. Eskel ran._ _ _

___They’d nearly reached Katarzina’s cottage. One last corner, and--_ _ _

___There Vaclav stood in front of the cottage door, chest heaving. He must have come running back and just beaten them._ _ _

___“Kat,” he said. “What--” He saw Evva and the plague maiden. His heart paused for a moment as if it had forgotten how to beat. “Gods above.”_ _ _

____**You.** _ _ _ _

___“No no no. Mira.” Evva spun to face the plague maiden, cupping its desiccated cheeks between her hands. “Ignore him. He doesn’t matter anymore. Just look at me, okay?”_ _ _

___Katarzina straightened her shoulders. “I’m taking our daughter home, Vaclav,” she said, struggling for a tone of confident declaration. But her eyes were too tired, the set of her mouth uncertain._ _ _

___“Our daughter?” Vaclav looked over the plague maiden, over Evva, with eyes that moment by moment lost their terror. His nostrils flared, his lip curled. “Ya’ve lost yer bleeding mind, woman! Look at that thing, just _look_ at it!”_ _ _

___“She’s our daughter. Just as we made her.”_ _ _

___“Lost yer mind,” he repeated. “Come over here, Kat, get behind me. Get away from it.”_ _ _

___Katarzina hesitated. Too much in her had shaped itself around the need for obedience. Eskel could see her body moving to react as it always had, in submission._ _ _

___But something tightened in her, and she stayed in place. “We have to,” Katarzina said, voice high, a beggar’s appeal. “We don’t have a choice.”_ _ _

___“You do.” Vaclav spoke with calm clarity, so much more solid than Katarzina’s plea. “That thing’s done enough harm already. Side with it, and yer no better. Come over ‘ere, Kat. Now.”_ _ _

___Eskel stepped in front of Evva and Mira, planting himself between them and Vaclav. He held up his weaponless hands. “She needs to do this. Trust me. Let ‘er pass— or you, me, your boy, we all die.”_ _ _

___Vaclav’s scowl deepened but he spared Eskel a dismissive glance only. “Ya listenin’ to this freak, Kat? Where’s yer sense?”_ _ _

___Katarzina could only clench her hands together. No words came out._ _ _

___“We’ll not have this. I’ll not have this.” Vaclav pointed at the plague maiden’s gaping maw. “Back, wretched abomination. Away from my wife. I banish ye from this village! Begone!”_ _ _

___The crawling insect drone shaped only one word: _No._ _ _ _

___Evva gripped the pesta’s talons more tightly. “Mira. Please look at me.”_ _ _

___“Vaclav.” Katarzina had found her voice but it came out plaintive, pleading. “Enough. Everything you’ve-- we’ve done to honor _natural law_ , what has it gotten us? Look around. Death. Nothing but death. Can we let it go? Can we please— have a daughter again?”_ _ _

___Eskel held his breath. Mira was losing control— he could hear the sound of flies buzzing louder._ _ _

___Vaclav’s face became stone. “She’s not ours. Not anymore. Ya brought the filth into the heart of our home. Ya’ve damned us all.”_ _ _

___“No.” Katarzina nearly choked on the word. “It’s you.”_ _ _

___The plague maiden brushed Evva aside with one skeletal arm._ _ _

___Eskel pivoted. The plan was fucked again, only worse. Defending Katarzina from the pesta had been hard enough. Now there were three humans and one of him, and Mira could lose control at any moment. If she did, he wouldn’t be able to save them all. Evva saw him turning, met his eyes with rabbit-wide eyes of her own. She knew._ _ _

___That left one option-- brute force. Shove Vaclav out of the way until Katarzina could get Mira across the threshold. Adding violence might provoke the plague maiden, make her snap, but they were out of options._ _ _

___Katarzina must have sensed the peril of the moment, too. She turned to the plague maiden and said quickly: “I welcome you into my home and heart, my daughter. Go through the door! Quick!”_ _ _

___Vaclav snarled. “Stupid bitch!” He lunged forward and slapped Katarzina across the face, hard and vicious. The sound of flesh against flesh rang sharp between the cottages. Evva gasped, Katarzina buckled forward, shielding her face as she must have so many times before._ _ _

___Then cacophony. The air ruptured with the sudden roar of insects, thousands of wings, the shrieks of rats, a woman’s furious scream._ _ _

___Eskel reached for his silver sword but the space next to Evva stood empty. Air thick as ink burned around him, darkness and the stench of rot, as the plague maiden passed _through_ him. He turned in time to see it materialize in front of Vaclav, a few paces ahead but even as he pulled the silver blade free he knew he was too late. The pesta reared, bone, flies, and rats. Hell made rotted flesh. Its claws flashed silver in the moonlight._ _ _

___Then they plunged into Vaclav’s body._ _ _

___Katarzina, Evva, Vaclav all cried out, in pain and terror, their screams discordant. Blood splashed dark and wet on the dirt. The thick gore stench. The plague maiden did not cry out. It tore, no, it hacked into him, bone-talons shredding skin and muscle and cartilage, shattering ribs. Vaclav stumbled back. He would have fallen except it lashed out again, again, again, hurling his body back through the sheer momentum of its force, a frenzied hatred no longer human._ _ _

___Vaclav bowed forward. Its claws raked his body from his hip to his shoulder. Vaclav hurtled backwards into the front door of the cottage and the wood of the old door cracked in a burst of splinters. The plague maiden surged after him with talons that dripped blood and viscera._ _ _

___Talons surged toward the open doorway, and bloodied human fingers fell into shredded flesh on the other side._ _ _

___The last dying embers of the hearth fire must have smoldered still. By their hesitant glow, the glint of auburn was just visible in the hair of the young woman who now knelt in Vaclav’s blood. He gasped underneath her, more a gurgle than a breath. He was already dead— in a few moments, his body would know it, too. The woman had her back to the doorway. They could see her lift her arms and examine her own bloodied hands in the glow of dying firelight._ _ _

___“Mira?” Evva whispered._ _ _

___“Dajmira,” Katarzina breathed._ _ _

___The woman who turned to face them looked young, ghoulish in the splattered ruins of Vaclav’s body-- and thoroughly, unmistakably human. The scraps of her dress still clung to her and from between the shreds of tattered cloth swung a wooden pendant carved with an arenaria._ _ _

___The woman’s eyes searched beyond the doorway, seeking, finding. “Evva.” She smiled._ _ _

___“Mira,” Evva said. Only her eyes moved, darting from the woman’s smile to the decimated corpse at her feet._ _ _

___“It’s alright now,” Mira said. She raised her bloodied arms. “I’m alright!”_ _ _

___“Yes...” Evva took a few hesitant steps toward the doorway. Then she stopped, her shoulders seizing. There was so much blood._ _ _

___Mira’s smile faltered. “Well, come on! We can be together now.”_ _ _

___Evva held her hand over her mouth and didn’t move._ _ _

___Katarzina walked past her with slow, steady steps. Mira’s eyes shifted from Evva to her mother._ _ _

___“Yes,” Katarzina said. “But let’s get you cleaned up first.”_ _ _

___Mira’s face could not settle on an expression. “I don’t want to clean up now. There’s too much to do.”_ _ _

___Footsteps behind them. Eskel turned, saw Evva’s grandmother approach. The old woman stopped, looked at him and then what lay behind him— the trail of blood ending in the open doorway— the two women staring inward— the young woman dark and gleaming with Vaclav’s pulped insides. The old eyes widened but she didn’t make a sound. No one else had noticed her arrival._ _ _

___“I know,” Katarzina said. Her voice— it was slow, heavy with grief, but steady at last. “You always hated baths when you were little. I would have to seat you on a cow and take you down to the river. Lila didn’t mind getting cleaned, so you didn’t either.”_ _ _

___Mira broke into an uncertain smile. “I miss Lila. She was a good cow.”_ _ _

___Katarzina stepped closer. “We can do that again, if you’d like. We can go down to the river right now. Perhaps with Norna? I’ll sing all the songs you love.”_ _ _

___The spirit’s smile widened. Eskel could see the outline of a wall behind her, through her._ _ _

___“You always loved the tale of the fox and the moon. I would sing it over and over and you would never be satisfied.” Now they were close enough to touch. “But I would keep singing it. Ten times if that’s what you wanted. Twenty. Because you are my daughter, Dajmira.”_ _ _

___Katarzina lifted her palm to the spirit’s cheek. Mira’s form had become as transparent as a pane of glass._ _ _

___“Mira,” Katarzina corrected herself in barely a whisper._ _ _

___Eskel could see her trembling. Once more, everything depended on this woman. Mira was not a pesta anymore but she still lingered. Leave her long enough and they’d have a night wraith on their hands, if Katarzina didn’t say the right thing now. He willed her toward something that Evva’s grandmother had said— there’s one thing children want from their children once they’re grown, one thing. Give it to her, Katarzina, what she’s needed, what could have stopped this in the beginning. Say the words._ _ _

___Katarzina found her voice one final time. “You are my daughter… and I love you.”_ _ _

___Mira broke into a smile._ _ _

___Then Katarzina’s hand hovered in empty air. The spirit had vanished._ _ _

___Evva covered her face with her hands. Katarzina stood swaying in place at first. Slowly she sank to her knees, and the stain of Vaclav’s blood spread up the washed-gray of her skirt._ _ _

___Eskel felt a touch on his shoulder. He turned. Evva’s grandmother._ _ _

___“I’ll take over from ‘ere, witcher,” she said, voice low._ _ _

___Eskel hesitated. Evva now sobbed freely into her palms, her whole body trembling. Katarzina did not cry. She brushed a hand over Vaclav’s forehead, pushing against the blood-matted hair._ _ _

___“Ya’ve already done yer work,” the old woman said. “This kind en’t for you.”_ _ _

___Eskel looked into the knowing eyes, like Vesemir’s and not. “Right,” he said._ _ _

___They each inclined their heads at the other. Then calm, unhesitating, the old woman came up behind Evva and put her arm around those shaking shoulders._ _ _

___Eskel didn’t linger. The old woman was right. He turned and walked into the night, leaving the women to work he did not understand and could not do._ _ _


	8. An Agreement Made

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Silver for monsters, steel for humans, and gold for the witcher," so the saying goes. But when Eskel collects payment for his contract, what he receives is both less and more.

Without the strings of arenarias dangling from the roof, Katarzina’s cottage looked desolate even in the bright morning light. It reminded Eskel of bodies picked barren by scavengers, stripped to bone.

The splintered remains of the door had been cleared away. Someone had hung a deerskin to cover the empty doorway. Eskel paused, decided he’d knock on the door frame instead. “Katarzina?” he called after three knocks. Hopefully she’d answer the first time. Last thing he wanted was to catch the attention of townsfolk and rile up another angry mob for a farewell party. 

A long pause. 

Then, faintly: “Come in.”

Eskel drew the deerskin aside and entered the cottage. The thick rankness of blood hit his nostrils as soon as he crossed the threshold, rusted iron already edged with sour moss. When the heat of the day hit, it would bring flies through the deerskin and down to the dark stain in the floorboards where Vaclav had died. Eskel let the deerskin swing into place behind him and stepped around the stain. 

His eyes strained to adjust. Hardly any light in here except for the thin lines of sunlight from the doorway. He found Katarzina sagged in a chair by the ashy remains of a cookfire. 

She didn’t look up. “Hello, Eskel.” 

He’d expect that voice out of a woman on the brink of death. Even her heart limped along at a lethargic pace. Though the inside of the cottage was dim, Eskel could see the sweep of shadow beneath her unfocused, half-lidded eyes. In one night, the woman had lost her husband and her daughter for the second time. Seemed some part of her had gone with them. 

“Hey, Katarzina.” Eskel cleared his throat. “Lil’ dark in here.”

Katarzina moved her head. “Oh. I suppose.”

He’d come for the contract payment. The sight of the woman hollowed out, almost collapsing from the inside, pushed that thought aside. Eskel looked around. “Mind if I get a light goin’?”

“Certainly, if you’d like.” Voice dull.

Some candles stood unlit on the table where Vaclav and Eskel had sat across from one another only two days ago. Igni brought them to flickering life. He left one on the table, put one on the windowsill, another next to a shelf filled with sacks of rye kernels. They shone a meager light, enough to illuminate the lines of Katarzina’s face. 

She shifted her weight in her chair. The half-shut eyes moved heavily in his direction, but didn’t quite find him. “I’m sorry. I would offer you tea, but…” Her hand rose a few inches, vaguely tilted in the direction of the ashen cookfire, and fell back into her lap. 

“Here. Got a trick for that. It’s no problem,” he said to her obligatory protest. 

A couple logs pulled out of the pile next to the hearth, a flare of Igni, and the cookfire returned to life. It would be too hot for a fire in a few hours, when the sun peaked overhead. For now, though, it brought light and a scent of woodsmoke that covered the stench of old blood in the planks. As the gloom receded, Katarzina’s eyes opened, started to glint in the firelight. 

Eskel sat and watched the flames. No rush. These were the last moments of his contract, part of the job as much as the rest of it. He had nowhere else to be. 

Katarzina looked at him for the first time. 

“Thank you.” A little life had returned. “That’s kind of you.”

Eskel shrugged. “You been through a lot.” And somewhere in the chain of events that ran from Mira and Evva to Vaclav’s blood in the floorboards, he’d played a part. It wasn’t a cause for guilt, but it called for this moment all the same-- sitting with the woman he’d helped make a widow, watching the flames. 

“Folk here have been some help. They’re building a pyre for him now.” The breath inside her caught. She paused to inhale through her mouth. “Many of them saw Dajmira last night. Not everyone believes it, but... you know how people are.”

“Yeah.” Too well. “I know.”

Katarzina sighed. “They wanted you to find a witch, Eskel. An outsider. But you found something worse. I’m afraid they’ll never forgive you for it.” 

Eskel almost smiled. There was a lot they wouldn’t forgive him for, starting with the moment he’d entered Aelweir. “Know that, too.”

A sound came from the other room: a dry cough.

“How’s Rasz?” Eskel said.

An anemic smile trembled on her lips. “He woke up this morning! Told me he had a dream about Dajmira. Said she looked happy, healthy. She spoke to him, but he said he couldn’t remember what she said. It’s the first time he’s spoken so clearly since the fever took.”

“He’s gettin’ better?”

“The best he’s been. Still made sick this morning, but… I’m hopeful.” 

Eskel nodded. Anything more he offered would be a lie. The plague maiden no longer haunted the village, infecting and tormenting victims. Now Rasz’s life depended on a fight with a different enemy: the plague itself. A death from the more natural order. 

“He slept through the tumult last night,” Katarzina said. “I haven’t told him about his father.”

“Might wanna. He’ll hear about it sooner or later. Someone else might not get the story straight.”

Katarzina rubbed her sleeve between her thumb and forefinger. “No. But I might not, either. I’ve been going through this in my head, trying to figure out how we got here. What happened to us.”

Eskel stayed silent. Katarzina’s sleeve rustled in her fingers.

“I thought he was saving me. When we first met.” She smiled down at her sleeve and past it, through the years. “I was fourteen. My father had already picked the man I’d marry. It was a business transaction. I’d maintain my husband’s accounts, host endless dinners for the merchants guild, take hours to select the appropriate dress for every occasion, send the right message. My mother’s life.

“When I met Vaclav, he was this-- strong, honest farm boy. Not like the boys I knew. He didn’t care about wearing the proper shade of emerald green. And he knew so much the others didn’t know. How to break a horse. How to go to the river and come back with a feast. How to be clear with a woman.” She crushed the fabric of her sleeve in her hand and the smallest, tightest corner of her lip twisted up. “That’s what he was like, in the beginning. Then he became aldorman, and things changed. The pressure-- the burden-- he _hardened_ with it. Started saying what he used to mock in his father-- order, obedience, natural law.”

Eskel shook his head. “His father’s son.”

“In the end. But he didn’t have to be.” Katarzina dropped her hands into her lap. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your burden. I just…” She blew out air. “I just wanted to tell you who my husband was. Twenty-three years we were married. A lifetime. I knew all the parts of him. He was many things. Some of them terrible. But he was not a monster. When you leave here... I just wanted you to know that.”

Katarzina’s eyes found him, and they begged for understanding. She was entrusting something to him, a truth that asked him to bear witness and carry it alone. But Eskel couldn’t give her what she wanted. He couldn’t tell her that she was right because the men and boys were dead anyway, Mira lay in her grave anyway. People hired witchers to take care of monsters. When drowners killed, no one wasted energy wondering why.

“Think Rasz will understand that?” Eskel said instead.

The entreating look passed from her eyes. “I don’t know. I hope he’s… better.” Better in health or a better man than his father? Katarzina straightened in her chair and did not say. “I have you to thank that he’s around at all.”

“Nah. You did most of the work.” Eskel shrugged one shoulder, letting a restrained smile tighten his face. “I just flashed a lil’ silver.”

“Yes. Quite effectively. Which reminds me, your payment.” Katarzina rose to her feet and crossed the room to a chest with a large lock, one of those background sights he’d set aside as irrelevant. She opened it and pulled out a pouch that clinked with metal. “This is yours. Vaclav kept the key on him. I suppose he didn’t trust me.” Her mouth moved in an odd shape-- a bitter smile? An amused grimace?

Eskel stood up. “Vaclav revoked that contract, did’n he?”

“He did. But now he’s gone, and I want to give this to you.” Katarzina thrust the pouch toward him. 

Eskel took it. Seventy crowns, lighter than the pouches that folk usually handed to him at the end of a contract-- but better than a dead bird. “Thanks. Appreciate it,” he said. “Even if we had a contract of our own.”

“Ah. Yes. I’ve got the payment for that, too.” Katarzina started toward the deerskin that now acted as her front door, beckoning him to follow. She was from another place, alright, outside of Aelweir. When she held her head rigid and lifted her skirts to step over the bloodstained floor, it was with the poise of a rich man’s daughter.

Outside. Maybe it really was a dead bird. Eskel followed her into the sunshine and blinked the brightness away as he followed her behind the cottage.

“Hold on,” Katarzina said. “It must be around here somewhere. It was here all night and morning, I don’t see why-- aha!”

“Huh?” Eskel said, but even as he said it, a mottled shape bounced into view. A puppy bounding toward them. Somehow it looked familiar--

“Wait,” he said. “I know that dog.” 

“You do?” 

The pup must have been less than two months old. The grass towered above it in places, but that didn’t stop the determined little creature. Ears flapping and bouncing, it ran directly through the grass to Eskel where it promptly threw itself on its back and rolled its belly up to him. A she-dog. 

“Yeah.” Eskel dropped to a crouch and scritched his fingers through the delicate fur of the pup’s tummy. She squirmed in happiness, slapping her scrawny gray tail against the earth. “This lil’ pup was followin’ me ‘round yesterday. Wouldn’t stop ‘til ‘er mother came and took ‘er away.”

“Must be Jurek’s bitch. She had a litter, oh, two months ago, right when the trouble with the plague started. Poor sire’s dead, Jurek passed and we’ve all been a bit distracted, so I’m afraid the pups have grown wild.” Katarzina’s grin was tiny but genuine as she looked down at the squirming puppy. “Not that you’d know it from this! She came by the front door last night, after… everything. Hasn’t gone far since.”

Eskel wrapped his big hands around the pup’s small wriggling body and lifted her to eye level. Brown eyes blinked back at him from behind a fluff of brown and gray fur that fanned out from her snout like an old man’s moustache. She was a mutt-- who knew how many breeds of dog and wolf had bred to make this tail-wagging specimen?

Destiny, huh.

“I’m sorry,” Katarzina said. “I know it’s not quite… it’s not exactly…”

“No,” Eskel said, setting the puppy down on her oversized white paws, “she’s perfect. Heh. Been paid in animals a few times now. I gotta start takin’ coin again, or I’ll end up with a menagerie.”

“Oh dear.” 

“‘Least she’s small enough to ride with.” That was a funny thought. He wondered how Scorpion would take to this new, squirming rider.

Eskel stood up. Katarzina was looking at him. Sometimes the eyes of the grieving had a certain distant cast, the same as wraiths, as if they were looking at you from a few steps beyond the veil. 

“Where will you go now?” she asked.

“Back to the Path, the next contract. Wherever it is.”

“Mm. I don’t suppose we’ll ever see you again.”

“Pro’lly not. Good thing, though. Kinda trouble that needs a witcher, you don’t want twice.”

The puppy panted at their feet. Neither of them looked down at her. 

“I suppose not.” Katarzina breathed deeply. “Then…” A moment’s hesitation before she reached out, taking both of Eskel’s hands in hers. She held them lightly and stared down at her thumbs resting atop his knuckles. “Thank you for helping us.” She looked up at him, her eyes fully present now. “You’re a decent man, Eskel. Thank you for that, too.” 

Eskel looked down at her. He guessed he heard only half of what she meant. Finally he shook his head, said the only thing he could think to say: “That’s the Path.” 

Katarzina smiled slightly. “It’s _your_ path. Where will it take you, in the end? A farm with a menagerie?”

“Heh. That’s the fairy tale. Nah-- ‘fraid our stories don’t get pretty endings.”

She pressed her thumbs into the bones of his hands with a gentle squeeze. “And… does that content you?”

Eskel looked down at her fingers, smaller and thinner than his. Their different labor had marked their hands with separate patterns of callus. She'd picked up a scythe, too-- city girl, marrying into a life of rising with the sun and scrambling in the dirt, matching the rhythms of the seasons like all her neighbors but never blending in. No one from the outside could blend in here. Eighty years ago he'd been born to folk with callouses like hers, hands that cradled him so he'd grow tall and strong enough to work the same fields. He would've been a farmboy like Vaclav, worn lean and practical by the dirt that would've worked its permanent way under his fingernails. Sun-baked, pitchfork-thin and just as spiney, Eskel would've been marked by the work he inherited from his family. A stranger would've felt it carved into his hands.

Instead his parents had died and Vesemir had taken him north. The callouses in Eskel's hands now followed the patterns of sword hilts, the tools that maintained sword and armor and horseshoes, the feeding, saddling, and cleaning of a horse that no farmer could afford. He had inherited another kind of work with its own distinct marks. He wondered if Katarzina felt the work in his hands. 

Eskel curled his fingers into the grooves of hers, felt for a moment the marks of a life that was not his. Did it content him? “Yeah,” he said, and meant it. He squeezed her hands and let them go. 

That smile drifted across her face again, mild, but clear of the haze of grief. “When I told you the story of Enovin, you liked it. Because he never stopped giving a damn.”

Eskel’s smile was rueful. “What can I say. I’m a sucker for long-term work.” 

“I wish you luck in that work, then. On the Path.” 

Katarzina took a few steps away, stopped, half-turned. “Farewell, Eskel.” One more moment’s hesitation, and then she walked away without looking back. 

Eskel stood in the patch of grass behind her cottage. A vague, irritating sense kept him in place, the instinct that a thought had escaped before it was fully allowed to form. If he paused, gave it a chance to catch up, maybe the lost impulse would return and find expression at last. 

Instead he felt a pull on his trousers. His new pup had sunk her teeth into his pant leg and tugged at it with a barrage of would-be ferocious growls. 

“Hey. Save it for the monsters.” Eskel bent down and pried her jaws apart. It took a little effort to pull her bright white puppy teeth off him. He rebuffed her bouncing attacks two more times before she sat her butt in the dirt and grinned up at him, little pink tongue lolling. By then, he’d forgotten what he was thinking.

“Well. Guess it’s you and me. Ready to go, lil’ mutt?” 

He headed for the forest to take the roundabout path back to Scorpion. The pup bounced ahead of him but only a few paces, constantly pausing to look back before running forward again, always in the right direction, as if she already knew where to go. 

***

Sunlight hit the mid-air dust on the road leading out of Aelweir. It made a fog of gold hang over the path like slow-spinning smoke. Eskel tossed another stick down the road and his new pup bounded after it, only to abandon the stick for another a little further away-- and then a root, and then a piece of bark that he had to chase her down and pry from her jaws. She’d take a little training. 

“‘ey! Spit that out. Damn it, that was a rock. Why’d you eat a rock?”

Alright-- a lot of training. 

He turned at the sound of footsteps. Evva tromped toward him with a sack over her shoulder.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Evva thrust the sack at him. The smell of fresh peasant’s cheese wafted from the burlap. “It’s from my nana. She says you don’t eat enough.” 

Eskel hefted the sack. Cheese, fresh-ish bread, some kind of pierogi… oh yeah. This would make a feast on the road. “Give ‘er my thanks.” 

“Naturally. Who’s this?” Evva looked down at the pup, who’d devoted herself to a thorough investigation of Evva’s shoes. 

“Meet my Child of Surprise.”

“Really? Aww!” Evva dropped to a crouch. “You’re going off to be a witcher-dog, are you? Who’s a brave little witcher-dog? You are! Oh, yes, you are!”

Eskel turned his back on the two of them. She didn’t need to see him grinning. Witchers had a reputation to uphold. He pretended to busy himself with securing the sack of food to Scorpion’s saddle. When he turned around, Evva once again stood upright but this time one hand reached across her chest to grasp her other arm and she stood slightly hunched. Oddly insecure posture. Interesting.

Eskel draped one arm over Scorpion’s saddle. “So,” he said, “this is it.”

“Yes.” Evva made little back-and-forth nervous twists from her hips, like a little girl told to be quiet for the fourth time. “I just wanted to thank you. You’ve done so much for us. And you didn’t even know us.”

“Ah, no need--”

“And you made me and Mira sound so normal, and you said it _is_ normal out there, and I just.” Evva halted the rush of words with a much-needed breath. “What’s it really like? In the cities.”

There was no reason for her heart to quicken, yet there it was: a heightened rabbit-thump rhythm. Eskel deliberately slowed his motions, the pace of his words. “You really wanna know, huh.” At her nod, he continued. “You’re thinkin’ it’s gotta be different out there. You ain’t wrong. Aelweir’s a shithole, Evva. Think you know that by now. Twenty miles south, you won’t hear a damned word about natural law. Not the way they talk here, anyway. There’s no Federbludd out there. They’ve got Belleteyn, not Madergidd. You know ‘bout Belleteyn?”

“I’ve… heard of it.”

“You’d like it. Yeah, world out there’s different. Got its own kinda shit, but-- you find the stink you can live with.” Eskel paused. She was looking at him with her mouth open, eyes too intent. This was more than idle curiosity. “Why you ask?”

“Because…” Evva twisted left, then right, then flopped her arms down at her sides. “After everything, after all this… I don’t think this is the place for me.”

Eskel bowed his head a moment, then squinted back up at her, deliberately slow again. “Your whole life’s been here. Your family. Everyone you know. Can be a good thing, belongin’ to a place.”

“I don’t belong to this place.” Evva scoffed. “I never have. You heard how people talk to me. They treat me like a…”

“Like a freak.”

“Yes.” Her voice softened with relief, knowing he understood. “Exactly. Always, since everything with me and Mira came out, and they always will. But now I _know_ it isn’t like that in other places. And…” Now her heart hammered in her chest. Her shoulders rose with a deep breath and the words rushed out of her all at once: “And that’s why I want to go with you.”

“Sorry,” Eskel said immediately. “Not gonna happen.”

“Not for long,” she said quickly. “Just to the next city. It’s a long way to go alone. Once I’m there, I’ll find a carpenter and apprentice myself.” 

“That easy, huh? Where you gonna live? You even know anyone outside of Aelweir?” Damn, he was starting to sound like the old man.

“No,” Evva said, her jaw tightening on the words. “I don’t know anyone. So I’ll stay in an inn or a boarding house. I’m going anyway, whether or not I go with you. I’ll walk fifty miles alone if I have to. This place…” She shook her head fiercely. “I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Then get used to walkin’.”

“Why?” Evva exploded. “You saw what they did to Mira. What they did to you! Vaclav would’ve kicked your teeth in if Katarzina hadn’t stopped him. And they would’ve let him. They would’ve joined in! _You_ get to ride off with your scary swords and your big muscles and your black horse. I don't! I'm trapped here!”

She turned abruptly away. The little pup danced around her ankles, whimpering and staring up at her. 

Eskel folded his arms over his chest. This was what he did. He finished the job, got his payment, and left. Who the hell was she to go off on him? As if he owed her help. As if he was… involved. 

Quick, straightforward, easy. That’s what they’d all thought about witcher’s work back in Kaer Morhen, when they were little boys swinging wooden swords and imagining monsters but never their victims. Vesemir hadn’t made it sound otherwise. But Vesemir had lived in the age of Kaer Morhen’s power, when hundreds of witchers bustled in a keep that they’d all thought impenetrable. Back then the witchers could hide from the world, pretend they weren’t part of it. Vesemir hadn’t known to prepare them for this new age: a crumbling ruin, a handful of scattered brothers, work that could never be neutral. 

Eskel let out a long, slow breath. Evva must have heard it as a signal. She turned back around, rubbing the heel of her palm against her cheek. He lifted his eyebrows in an expectant gesture.

“I’m sorry.” Evva sniffed. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s… it’s not your problem.”

She was right. It wasn’t his problem. There was no reason that Eskel should have stayed on that hot, dusty road, listening to her rage.

Except that Kaer Morhen was gone. There’d be no reunion of brothers this winter, and if he wanted that feeling of homecoming, he’d have to find it somewhere else. Maybe it was possible with someone else who knew what it was like to see people curl their lips at the sight of you, spit as you pass, see your life dangle in the balance and do nothing. With someone as starved as he was to be seen. 

Eskel sighed through his nose again. “Listen. You don’t know me. Right? We’ve known each other a couple days. And you wanna ride off with me alone? In the middle a nowhere?”

“I know some things about you.” Evva stilled herself and fixed him with a steady stare, neither flinching nor looking away. “I know you took me seriously when I told you about Mira. I know you took a beating from Vaclav when you could have killed him. I know that you came back to help Mira even though your payment could’ve been a dead bird. And I know, despite appearances...” Her gaze flicked between his eyes. “...you’re like me. Different.” A longer pause. “And alone.” 

Eskel kept his face expressionless as he gazed back at the woman who, from the moment they’d met, had never stared at his scars.

“I’m not asking for a rescue,” she said. “Just a ride.”

A witcher riding with a human. Well, Geralt did it plenty. Word had it that the bard had saved _his_ ass a few times, if you believed tavern talk. 

Something pulled at his leg. Eskel looked down. His little mutt had plunged her teeth into his trousers again. He bent down, wrestled her little jaws off the leather, and stood up with the pup squirming in his arms. His Child- Mutt? - of Surprise planted her clumsy white paws on his chest and licked the underside of his jaw. 

“You ever feel like fate’s talkin’ to you,” Eskel said, “‘cept it only speaks Toussaintois?”

Evva blinked. Her lips quirked. “Um… no. Not really.” 

Eskel shrugged. “Nevermind.” He set the pup down, sighed, squinted up at the clear summer sky.

How’s this for never getting involved, old man?

“Pack your things,” Eskel said to the lone cloud in the sky, “before I ‘member this is crazy.” 

***

“Evva. C’mon, hurry up.”

“I’m going, I’m going!” She rummaged through another of the bags that they’d slung on top of Scorpion. For his part, the warhorse took the extra weight without complaint. Only the pup’s occasional nips at his mane bothered him, earning a jerk of his huge head. “Just have to find it first. I know I packed it somewhere…”

Eskel shifted his weight in the saddle, partially because a few townsfolk had spotted them with none-too-friendly stares and partially because the saddle hadn’t been designed for riding double. 

“This what you were workin’ on yesterday?” he asked. “Seems most folk put their crops out.”

“That’s the idea,” she said, still rummaging. “Whatever our fathers gave us as seeds and we’ve brought to harvest. Most folk take that literally. I, on the other hand… aha!” She produced something the size of her palm with a flourish. “Found it. Take a look at that!” 

Eskel opened his hand and she pressed something into his hand. A wooden pendant, large, spiked. Familiar somehow. He turned it over and gazed upon an exact replica of his wolf’s head medallion, only carved out of wood. 

“Wouldya look at that,” Eskel marveled. 

“Got the idea for it when you first rode into town.” There was pride in her voice. “I’d started a sculpture of some rye sheafs. Couldn’t get it to look right, though. And then you showed up.”

“Huh. Maybe I’m missin’ somethin’, but-- how is this a seed you brought to harvest?”

“Well, he’s the one who taught me woodworking. My father. And my commissions brought most of the coin for that contract even if I had to pretend otherwise. So, you know-- with his help, I bought us a witcher. It fits. And if you think about it, I helped with figuring out how to help Mira, so… it’s almost as if I’m, you know, a witcher’s assistant. A squire?”

“Is _that_ what we’re callin’ it?”

Evva snatched the medallion out of Eskel’s hand. “You don’t have to laugh. Now hold on. I only need a few minutes.”

“Alright. Keep it quick. They don’t look too happy to see me.”

The pup nearly jumped off the saddle to follow Evva. Eskel held her to his chest as Evva knelt before the offering tree, where the rotted crops from the day before had been replaced with fresh offerings. Folk muttered in the distance, but none of them approached. Maybe it was the fact that Eskel and Evva were clearly leaving. Or maybe it was the trophy hook with the prominently displayed nekker head, now withered in the summer heat. 

Odd ritual, Federbludd. But Eskel saw the appeal. Good to have something tangible, some visible sign of what there was to be honored. What would he leave the old man as an offering? What did witchers grow-- coin purses? Trophies? Their collection of scars? 

Vesemir’s voice came, so readily summoned: _A witcher gets paid in coin._ Eskel almost smiled. But conjuring the old man meant conjuring his attitude, too, and he’d have plenty to say about the human woman traveling with him and the little mutt currently gnawing on Eskel’s saddle horn. 

Eskel wrestled the pup into his lap and kept up his end of the imaginary conversation. Listen, old man, he’d say, you asked if I’d stay at Kaer Morhen because you trusted me. Well, if you’re out there somewhere with that damned frown like I left my right flank open during practice, you gotta trust me again. World’s changed, keep’s gone. You taught us to survive— in the new world, could be this is what we need to survive. Could be you prepared us for a Path that ain’t here anymore, and now we gotta learn to walk our own. But I’ll keep you with me, old timer, long as you don’t give me a hard time ‘bout the things that need changing. What do you say? Have we got an agreement?

How would the old man respond? The best Eskel could imagine was a glint of those knowing amber eyes, the cast they took when Vesemir gave his highest compliment: _Not bad, Mutt. Not bad._

“You could leave something too, if you’d like.” Evva had come back and caught him staring. “The offerings are sacred, so nobody’d muck with it.”

“Ahhh, don’t think so. Wouldn’t wanna call the old man’s attention. He’d hate this.”

Eskel offered his arm. Evva used it as leverage to pull herself into the saddle behind him. “‘This’? Which part, the waste of food? Some of our folk say that, even.”

Eskel pulled Scorpion around, pointing him toward the road out of Aelweir. “Nah, not the ritual. Us travelin’ together. ‘A witcher is a lone hunter’ and all that. Always used to harp on about self-reliance.”

“Wait.” Evva shifted in the saddle behind him. “Your father was a witcher? I thought…”

“Well. The man who raised me.” His father? “Yeah.”

“A witcher for a father! Oh, you must tell me about that. Did you take father-son bonding trips? Did he take you monster-slaying?”

“Actually…”

Evva all but bounced in the saddle. “Tell, tell! Come on, it’s a long road. We’ve to occupy the hours somehow, right?” 

That they did. So Eskel told her-- about Vesemir’s discovery of a pack of feral dogs with one feral orphan boy, the road to Kaer Morhen, meditation lessons, running the Gauntlet twenty times in one day because he’d used Axii to make Geralt start a food fight. He skipped Wiesli’s last visit to the keep. But there were plenty of other stories to tell and he went through them, one after another, until Evva interrupted him with a laugh. 

“And folk would have you believe that witchers are raised by demons,” she teased. “You really did love him, didn’t you?”

Eskel stiffened. He’d lived the better part of a hundred years and Vesemir had been there for nearly all of them, but those were words he hadn’t combined before.

“...yeah,” Eskel said, trying the idea on. “I guess we did. In our own way.”

Something that had been missing slid into place.

He wanted to think about it later, somewhere private. He turned his head toward her with a grin: “You talk about it so normal-like.”

Her eyebrows crinkled. Then she remembered where she’d heard those words before and they both started laughing. Scorpion’s ear flicked in disapproval of the sudden riot on his back and the pup bounced on the saddle, wagging her tail at what was clearly a fun new game.

There, old man, Eskel thought, still laughing as he cradled the pup to his chest, though he didn’t completely know what he meant. There.

~Finis~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are! 
> 
> This story took me a long time to write. Mostly it was Vaclav & Katarzina keeping their secrets about their painful, decaying marriage-- a couple rewrites and a few different ideas about the ending later, they finally came together in my head. And then I was even sadder. At least Mira finally found rest. 
> 
> Eskel's figured some things out, now that Papa Vesemir's gone, but he's still got a long ways to go yet. Ideas for his next adventures keep popping into my head, so his story will continue in the series [Every Place and No Place](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909087). The next two stories take a more character-centric turn, and then-- we'll see. 
> 
> Many thanks and much love to asfroste for encouraging me even when she sees my shitty rough drafts, Kiko_Murda for the support, beta-reading, and righteous fury, and Mike for the tireless lore-checking. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed~


End file.
